


Silver Among Scales

by feistymuffin



Category: JackSepticEye (YouTube RPF), Markiplier (YouTube RPF), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fae Jack, Greek gods, M/M, Mythology - Freeform, Naga Mark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-30 12:16:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12108516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feistymuffin/pseuds/feistymuffin
Summary: The naga washes up with the responsive rushing flood, coming in with the massive downpour’s aftermath like so much debris. The morning after the last of the storm he’s simply there—a hulking presence on the outskirts of the marsh, intimidating and dangerous.





	Silver Among Scales

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a birthday gift for my lovely friend Durk, who I like to spitball random ideas with and then get possessed by the urge to write them. I promised him a monster fic times two, so this is the first half! Happy birthday, dude, I hope you have a fantastic day!!!!

The rain comes for a day and a half, torrential and pounding in its ferocity. Wind, water and thunder buffet them persistently, though for the most part Jack’s magic protects him and his friend Felix beside him. The monsoon floods the marsh predictably well and for the majority of the storm lightning appears to be a more reliable source of light than the sun, the cracking and booming of thunder its willing and eager companion. 

Jack waits it out like the rest of the marsh’s inhabitants, taking shelter up high wherever possible and hunkering down, the only thing to do in weather such as this. It’s the second monsoon of the season and not uncommon for this time of year but the sheer amount of actual downpour is remarkable. Jack, high in a cypress tree, is secure in his spot when it comes to the rising water level but his shielding spell is eventually too much to hold onto along with his exhaustion of being kept awake by the rain and finally, after hours of concentration, he has to let it go. At once he and Felix are soaked through and shivering from the cold and the wet, but it’s still better than being on the ground.

The naga washes up with the responsive rushing flood, coming in with the massive downpour’s aftermath like so much debris. The morning after the last of the storm he’s simply there—a hulking presence on the outskirts of the marsh, intimidating and dangerous. 

He’s not the first naga Jack’s seen, not by far, but he’s definitely the largest by a landslide. Jack can barely sense him since he doesn’t seem to want to approach much closer than the very edges of the marsh’s populated area, and he’s only able to get ghostly readings on his emotions when he comes within range. Every twinge of feeling he gets from the creature only puzzles him—within the naga is a myriad of things but above it all is peacefulness, and a lingering melancholy. 

Within hours it’s all anyone can talk about, the prowling beast of a serpent whose very aura emits power. _He’s probably feral. Keep your distance, he’s unpredictable._ It’s not long before everyone is giving the ominous, hovering creature a wide berth, whispering warnings to each other in passing not to leave the inner marsh alone. 

As he wades through the thigh-high water in the most flooded part of the marsh alongside Felix, feeling his toes sink down into the murky, soaked underbelly of the waterbed, Jack murmurs in a lull of conversation, “That naga. D’you think he’s as hazardous as everyone is saying?”

“Hazardous enough,” Felix shrugs. He pauses, turning his eyes on Jack and giving him a thorough study as the plumage around his ears flares for a moment before smoothing over once more. “I see your adventurousness poking out. Don’t go chasing feral beasts, Jack. This one will chew you up and spit you right back out again.”

“Who says he’s feral?” Jack mumbles irritably. “Nobody knows him. He’s just arrived, and I can tell he’s not aggressive.”

“Regardless,” Felix says, feathers ruffling as he grumbles, “don’t chance it. I don’t want to find pieces of you scattered about the wetland this time tomorrow.”

“Jeez, stereotype much,” Jack grunts. Felix casts him a sardonic look and elbows him, and with a sigh Jack lets him steer the conversation away from befriending beasts.

*

It sticks with him though, the unfathomable idea—to everyone but him, anyway—that the newcomer is something treacherous to be avoided. He ponders it as he lays up in the boughs of a sycamore that night, perusing the darkly blanketed sky above him. Naga are known for being conniving and deceitful, for being alarmingly quick and for having high tempers, primarily. Their minds are sharp and their reflexes sharper, and they can plan better than practically anyone or anything. In his time Jack’s come across his share of everything there is to come across, and naga are no exception. Jack… doesn’t remember the individuals fondly, to put it politely.

_So maybe Felix has a point_ , Jack admits to himself bitterly. Maybe it’s foolhardy to try and see silver among scales. But would a feral, uncontrolled creature have such serenity in him, such a lack of hostility? Being the only fae in the area, he has no one else to verify his senses with, but he’s never been wrong yet about his instincts with people.

He hears movement beneath his perch, the sloshing of water, and twists curiously to see the commotion. He glances down and sure enough, a small group of beasts is making its way to the exterior parts of the marsh. A frown forms over his lips when he realizes they’re beelining for the spot that he can sense where the naga lay sleeping, just outside the broad circle of trees. 

Beside him Felix is asleep but Jack knows the tengu is a light sleeper at best, and he won’t chance the possibility of Felix catching him slinking off to investigate mildly suspicious things in the middle of the night. Still, he keeps his senses wide open and follows the group’s trajectory towards the naga. Sure enough, their progress stops when they come upon its sleeping form.

Words are exchanged once the naga wakes but the span of them is brief, and when the first cry of pain rings through the air Jack knows why. He jolts upright and flings himself from the tree, landing in an almighty splash in the knee-high water below. Casting a quick spell Jack hops up onto the surface of the water and bolts off in the direction of the naga and the group, the balls of his feet alighting softly on the water as he sprints to the audible scuffle.

_Did the naga attack them?_ Jack wonders as he runs, ignoring the growing sound of Felix’s wings flapping behind him and the tengu’s sleepy, questioning calls. _Or did they provoke the naga and attack him? What did they seek him out for in the first place?_

Right before Jack reaches them, just yards away, there’s a great howl of pain followed by a tidal splash of water and then silence. He comes up to the group and the naga is nowhere to be seen, but already Jack feels its soul retreating, emanating pain like a radio emitting sound. Furiously he turns to the nearest beast, a weasel yokai, and demands among the rippling waves, “What happened?”

“Blasted thing got away, is what,” the yokai snarls irritably, jerking an angry paw towards the lake that connects to the marsh where the naga presumably fled. “Jiwu got him good, though, on his slimy, rotten tail. He’ll be dead by this time tomorrow.”

Jack’s heart plummets and he looks past the yokai to a well-known beast in the marsh, Jiwu. Jiwu is a manticore, and as such their bite and tail barb are highly venomous. As he looks to the calming ripples of the lake, his ample night vision assisting him, Jack knows that the naga’s days are now numbered. 

_Unless I help him_ , Jack thinks, and like solidifying metal Jack’s mind is surely made up. He casts furious eyes on the yokai and his companions. “Did he provoke you, or threaten you?” By the lack of response from any of the beasts, Jack has his answer. He bristles at the group as Felix lands beside him, wings folding up and expression quizzical. “The next soul to attack anyone without provocation will deal with me.” 

The yokai laughs, and after a moment his friends all chip in—all except Jiwu, who’s at least been in the marsh long enough to know what Jack is capable of. “And what are you, a spring nymph? So frightening, boy. Persephone coddles you lot too much, in my opinion. Never gave you enough of that nature magic to mean anything.”

Jack’s lip curls with distaste. “First of all, I’d watch what you say about the goddess here. This land is hers and your presence here persists by her gracious will. Secondly, I am not of her ilk. I am fae, _aos sí_ ,” he growls, and lets his glamour drop for a long, captivating moment to let the beasts see his true form. 

White fear pales their faces, draining them of their cockiness as they take in his ethereally beautiful features, hypnotic grey eyes, slightly pointed ears and skin adorned with old Irish Gaelic tattoos all down his slender body—words of phenomenal power. The smoky cerulean of his skin beneath the darker symbols is sparkling with energy, glittering with his magic and casting a mystical aura around him. But just as quickly that form is gone, and he appears normal again with his dulled grey-blue skin, void of his aura and the marks on his flesh except for the subtle glow of their magic as he stands upon the water.

“I am _aos sí_ ,” Jack says again, unblinking against their significant size advantage, “and you would do well to remember.”

The beasts’ expressions are composed once again, but now they study him with a new light in their eyes. Jack smothers his unease at those looks and snaps, “Begone. This is a peaceful marsh, and this is also your only warning. Any other transgressions and I will make sure you do not remain here.” 

He stares them down and one by one the beasts slink back through the water towards the inner marsh. Last to go is Jiwu, who eyes Jack with guilt in their expression. “I made a bad call,” the manticore says, and sighs. “I hope you won’t hold this against me.”

“That depends on the outcome of the naga’s wellbeing,” Jack says stonily, and he watches the beast walk away through the water to trail after the weasel yokai and his friends. 

Once they’re gone and well out of earshot Felix turns to Jack and demands, “Now that that’s over with, what the hell are you thinking?! You just painted a huge target on your back, if those snarky little bastards are anything at all like they appear to be. What the hell are you defending a naga for, and putting yourself in the line of fire while you’re at it?”

“I will defend anyone innocent, not just this naga,” Jack rebuttals grumpily, folding his arms. 

“Your ridiculous sense of heroism is going to get you killed,” Felix grouses, mimicking his motion and sticking his tongue out past his curved beak while he’s at it.

Jack rolls his eyes and looks to the lake. He taps a delicate finger against his forearm while he studies the calm surface and says in a murmur, “You didn’t hear him, Fe. He was in so much pain. And didn’t you see them? Not a scratch, on any one of them. Not one single scratch.”

Felix lets out a harsh sigh, his entire body rippling with the motion as his feathers minutely perk and then settle. “Yes. Yes, damn it, I saw. He didn’t fight back at all.”

“And he was approached in his sleep, and attacked unprovoked,” Jack goes on, his temper riling. “What kind of animal just attacks someone who’s done nothing?”

“Plenty of them,” Felix mutters cynically, and waves a taloned hand towards the inner marsh. “We have a few within our populace for sure. God, I hate weasel demons. Nasty little pukes.”

“Does everything that comes out of your mouth have to be a racist stereotype?” Jack wonders in a weary exhale. He kneels and puts a palm down to the water, ignoring Felix’s grumbled, “Well, I’m right this time, at least,” and singing a short, soft lullaby to the lake. After a handful of seconds Jack feels its energy rouse beneath his palm, and he murmurs amicably, “Hello, old friend. Can I ask you a favour?”

Beneath his hand the water ripples in a vibrant pattern, casting out rings of contentment over the surface. Jack smiles. “Thank you, _cara_. Within you is a naga, badly wounded and needing aid. Please do your best to keep him well as long as possible.” Another singular ripple fans out from under his palm and Jack withdraws his hand, feeling the lake’s energy dissipate into the area as it searches for its charge. After a moment the ripple comes again, right at Jack’s feet, and then a cascade of bubbles rises up from the depths near the centre of the lake, sixty yards away. 

“Thank you,” Jack tells the lake again, and stands. He turns to look at Felix, who sighs when he sees the look on his friend’s face through the gloom. Jack’s lips quirk with humour. “I suppose it goes without saying that I’m not leaving the lakeside.”

“Of course you’re not,” Felix grunts, but he pats Jack on the shoulder and smiles. “I swear, you’d save a bug from a bird.”

Jack chuckles. “Says the bird,” he muses, and outright laughs when Felix squawks indignantly, his head plumage flaring. 

*

He lingers near the lake the remainder of the night and into the next day, lounging in the trees on the shore with slowly fading marks on their trunks as the water level steadily continues its recession back to normal. In the night Jack senses the naga in the lake, moving about, briefly coming up for air every half-hour or so before submerging again. Sometimes he feels eyes on him from somewhere in the dark, studiously attentive eyes that don’t leave him for minutes at a time, but he feels no fear, he senses no danger and despite the warbling of his heart inside his chest, that look upon his skin like fingertips, he doesn’t move from his perch.

Once day breaks and the warmth of the sun begins to spread over the marsh Jack hops down into the water still coating the ground, the soles of his feet sinking into the soaked sludge of the lakeshore. He casts a spell, words murmured on his lips in a lilting hum, and steps up onto the water’s surface, sluicing the muck from his feet with another short spell. 

“Good morning,” Jack says, lowering to sit on the water with his legs crossed. In a lethargic response the water in front of him burbles with a few air pockets of greeting. “How is he?” Even more lethargic bubbles follow this, and a few long, slow ripples. “He won’t come out while I’m here, will he?” A scattering of small ripples appear, and dissipate just as quickly. 

Jack sighs, chewing his bottom lip thoughtfully. “If I bring food and water, will you make sure he eats it?” One large bubble bursts at the surface, spritzing Jack with a misty cloud of water. He laughs and covers his face when the lake sprays him again, the surface popping a few more water bubbles. “Ah, hey! You know what I mean. He can’t drink _you_ without getting sick and you know it, don't be offended.”

In reply the water beneath his body surges up and tips Jack over onto his side before crashing back down over him and completely drenching him. Jack laughs again and swats at the water, saying in a scolding, playful tone, “I thought you were more mature than this, _cara_ , eons old as you are.” A jet of water sprays him right in the face as Jack sits up and he splutters out a laugh, shielding his face from the blast. “Alright, alright, enough, you big baby! I’ll purify some of you for him to drink instead!” 

The water cuts off, and Jack opens his eyes to see a metre-wide area in front of him bubbling happily. “So easily pleased,” he muses, and gets to his feet to head back into the marsh.

Hidden in a hollow sycamore stump are Jack’s belongings, and despite being underwater he knows all his things are untarnished by the wetness. The magical seals around the duffel bag—crude, but humans are surprisingly adept at designing useful things—is enchanted to be waterproof, as well as theft-proof, so even if anyone found it they couldn’t interact with it. Jack extricates a glass bottle with a cork lid and replaces his bag after shutting it again. 

Once back at the lake he dives, directed by the lake spirit, for tadpole eggs and gathers a hefty amount from within a vegetation forest on the northeast side of the lakebed. He doesn’t see the naga at all but he senses him moving around, avoiding Jack but undoubtedly keeping him within sight. Hands full, he resurfaces and sits on the water in the middle of the lake, casting a small spell to grow and thicken a lily pad into a plate to set the eggs on. With that done, he uncorks the bottle and scoops up a full bottle’s worth of water and sets that on the “plate” too. 

Jack settles himself comfortably and shuts his eyes, blocking out every last thing in the area that isn’t himself and the items before him, and calls upon the marks adorning his body. He calls on them like one would summon a loving pet, with simple but boundless affection and unequalled trust. When he holds the power in his hands he lifts a palm to face the lily pad plate and starts to sing, softly under his breath at first and then heightening as the energy starts to build. The words are ones of growth and life, coaxing energy into the tadpole eggs, sending purity coursing through the water in the bottle, and Jack feels the echoing shift of the magics around him as he wields his own. 

When he’s finished and he opens his eyes the plate is full of a magically contained but aggressively confused assortment of frogs, hopping and leaping all over the plate but unable to leave it. The water is nearly sparkling with cleanliness, and Jack picks it up and lifts it in emphasis, brandishing it to the lake before replacing it on the lily pad with a small smile as the water gurgles, pleased.

“See that he eats, okay?” Jack says gently, standing, and the water laps against his feet soothingly before he turns and leaves the lake behind him. 

*

He’s not sure how he manages it, but Jack stays away from the lake for the rest of the day. Worry grips him in tight claws, squeezing the breath out of him and piercing him with a bitter cold, but he stays optimistic with the knowledge that the lake spirit will let him know if anything goes wrong. 

“Jack, you need to relax,” Felix sighs, after beating him soundly—again—in a round of poker. They’re playing at a makeshift table on the high ground of the marsh, out of the stagnant flood water, sitting at a tree stump polished flat with a couple of magically relocated stones for chairs. “Seriously. The naga will be fine.”

The fae rolls his eyes and shuffles the cards. “Right, because one just recovers from a manticore bite.”

“You can’t heal him if he won’t let you,” Felix shrugs, then uses a talon to pluck an errant feather from his left wing. He twirls the feather between his talons and adds thoughtfully, “Though I don’t think that’ll stop you in the slightest.”

Jack snorts and deals out the cards, then cuts the deck and flips over the eight of clubs onto the stump. “Very astute, Fe. No, it likely won’t. I just… don’t want anyone to get hurt.” He grumbles and adds, “I’m a bit late for preventing it, but I can correct it.”

“Be sure not to wipe yourself out saving some stranger’s life, alright?” Felix says, and gives him a look. “Makes no difference if you replace your life with his.”

“Healing a manticore wound wouldn’t put me anywhere near the brink,” Jack asserts with a shrug of his own. “But your mother henning is appreciated nonetheless.”

“One day you will get tired of making fucking bird jokes,” Felix grunts.

“Not today, though,” Jack laughs delightedly, soaking up Felix’s irritated glower like a gleeful sponge.

He makes himself wait until early evening before heading back to the lake, the sun beginning its dip to the horizon over the tree line. The quick splash of something escaping from view is apparent when he gets close, his footsteps leaving ripples behind him on the water’s surface. As he approaches the lake Jack watches the waves diminish from the naga’s hasty retreat back into the depths. 

The water level has sunk significantly over the morning and afternoon, now only a few feet above normal but Jack keeps hold of his water walking spell, none too keen on getting muck on his feet if he can avoid it. 

He looks around for signs of the food he left out, and helpfully a limb-like pillar of water proffers his glass bottle from where it floats near a tree, completely empty. “Thanks,” he murmurs, and nudges the water spire with his knuckles. The water bumps him back before dropping back down into the lake. “He ate it all then?”

Bubbles spew up in front of him and he smiles, settling down onto the water with a lengthy hum. “Thank you for this, _cara_ ,” he says. “He needed somewhere safe.”

After replacing his water bottle in his stash Jack spends the evening at the lakeshore again, occasionally spotting movement out over the water, yards and yards away out over the very deepest parts of the lake. It’s the naga no doubt confirming his location, keeping an eye on him while he’s here. Jack wants to beckon him over, just wants to talk to him so he can understand why Jack is here, but he knows that yelling his intentions across a body of water would be about as helpful as saying them to himself. 

He dozes there until the sun disappears and the night sky opens before him like a blossom, dotting the sky with points of bright starlight alongside the sparkling, cloudy smear of the Milky Way arcing across the roof of the world. His back is wet and Jack knows that he’s laying on the lakeshore and all its mud, probably getting himself irreparably filthy, but he just lays where he is and hums an idle tune as he counts shooting stars.

It’s well beyond midnight when there’s a sloshing to his left, and Jack forces himself to a stone-like stillness while the naga crawls up laboriously onto the shore. Jack glances over and he sees the bulky shadow of the maimed beast, clawed two-fingered hands digging down into the slippery silt as he drags himself forward. His breathing is almost gasping, and right away Jack can sense his pain, his overwhelming pain.

Slowly, minutely Jack sits up, keeping his hands in sight and his movements fluid. When he’s upright he lowers his hands again to sit in his lap and waits. Once the naga comes to a stop with over half of his long, long tail still in the lake, he looks over to Jack and says in a short, pained breath, “Just make it quick.”

Jack opens his mouth to clarify the odd request, since he knows for a fact that purging and healing the effects of a manticore’s venom will take much longer than a moment or two, but he stops when the naga rolls over onto his back, freely exposing his belly to him. Like this, he’s in the most vulnerable, surrendering position one could possibly be in. It’s defeat, plain and simple.

“Oh,” Jack says, soft and small, because now it’s clear that this beast doesn’t mean “be quick” in terms of healing. With a morose frown he scoots forward, closer to the naga through the muck, and the creature doesn’t even flinch when Jack is near enough to touch, eyes slitted to nothing but narrow lines as he watches him. He does flinch, though, when Jack reaches out and puts delicate fingers against his side and belly, tracing a few inches away from a gaping slash across his ribs. The flesh and scales are all rent out of place, the cut jagged and sloppy. A wound of surprise, of ambush, and it’s not the only one like it. All along his torso the naga is littered with cuts and gashes, bites of varying size from various jaws, and nearly three feet down his tail Jack sees a gapingly wide, big-toothed jaw indentation, a lion’s mouth that left the grandest, deadliest wound of all. 

Quite suddenly Jack is furious that he let the weasel yokai and his companions go without so much as a slap on the wrist. The amount of damage here, inflicted on someone who didn’t even fight back, is disgusting to comprehend and it’s even more disgusting and rage-stoking to see the yokai’s handiwork up close. 

“Hold still,” Jack whispers, cupping his hand gently at the naga’s scaly shoulder, the most wound-free spot that Jack can find on him. The naga doesn’t move, only sharply inhaling when Jack’s hand rests on him, large thumbs twitching as if to grip something, eyes shutting tightly. Jack drops his glamour—having it active will just distract him from what needs doing and time is of the essence now—and calls for his magic, the markings on his body glowing with power as he summons the will necessary to spellweave. 

Jack keeps a hand on the naga’s shoulder and the other in the air, fingers spread and palm towards his abused body. By the time Jack is ready to weave his body is like a lantern in the darkness, his tattoos lit up brightly against his dusky skin and even showing through his clothing.

He hums under his breath as he begins his work and the sound is slow, careening and haunting, even mournful. It winds up his magic in a slow spiral and he directs it with his hand, moving it to the side to hover over the cut. There, Jack opens his mouth and starts to softly sing, his magic uncurling in a lazy roll and steadily sealing up the wound like pulling a zipper. Beneath his hands the naga jerks—no doubt feeling the tug of his flesh if not the actual and ironic pain of being healed—and Jack feels those pale, slitted eyes fall on him in disbelief. 

Singing spells is something Jack learned to do at a young age, and while not the most exemplary of fae he is supposedly one of the most pleasing to listen to. He’s been told that all his life, how beautiful he sounds while he sings and spellcasts, but he’s never believed it, really. It was just… his voice, nothing spectacular, nothing to get excited over. It served him a purpose in his life, singing to cast spells, because it made the magic that he wielded flow and stick much better than simply being spoken.

Now, though, as the serpent watches him sing with dilated pale eyes, watches Jack use magic to save him, he feels beautiful. He feels _complete_ , like what he’s doing is making a difference. And it is. He’s saving someone’s life, something worth so much in this world, and the sense of rightness in him as he realizes that is nigh impossible to top.

That pride bleeds through into his magic and into his singing, making him brighter—literally, his markings are glowing like neon now—and more content as he moves to the next cut. Magic is pouring from his hands and leeching into the naga hungrily, healing his body and easing his pain. As he works, though, Jack feels the resistance beneath the naga’s flesh, the manticore venom that’s already diligently committing itself to shutting down his organs. Jack plants his hovering hand onto the soft, snake-skinned belly, fully healed of external wounds, and douses the naga with energy. With care he starts shoving the venom back out, magically repelling it from every cell and repairing the leftover damage in its wake, working his way to the only wound left—the manticore’s bite.

The punctures are already leaking a black pus-like fluid as Jack moves down to the naga’s tail, dragging the venom out of his tail all the way from the tip and back up to the area nearest the bite. Black oozes from the wound now and distantly Jack hears the whimpering of the naga, no doubt feeling the venom in him like the worst possible sting, but he carries on and pulls the entirety of the venom back out of his body through its point of origin. Gushing like an onyx sludge, the manticore venom drools down the naga’s scaly side, his body visibly twitching in pain and his tail splashing in the water where it’s still submerged. But eventually the venom is run dry, but just to be sure Jack lets the wound bleed for a full minute without a hint of black before sealing it up with a pleasant hum. As an afterthought he waves a hand at the venom sludge and it goes up in smoke, diffusing an acrid smell into the air before the magic of the marsh overtakes it and nullifies its toxicity. 

Letting out a gusty, exhausted breath Jack plops back onto his butt in the mud, his small horns humming with residual energy from casting such strong magic, and studies the naga. His body is flawless, every scale back in place, every cut healed. While he was casting the spell Jack hadn’t been paying attention to anything but purging venom and closing wounds, but now that he’s not focused on saving his life he takes a long moment to actually acknowledge the body he healed. 

He’s much bigger up close than Jack even expected, mostly in height and the girth of his tail but also in muscle mass. His colouring is hard to determine in the moonlight but Jack would guess he’s a shade of green, although most of his markings are too dark to estimate. His hands have three digits, two broad fingers and a thumb, and are tipped in short but menacing-looking claws. His face, torso and arms—excluding his scaled and clawed two-fingered hands—are anthropomorphic, almost entirely human in appearance except for scales that run the length of his sides and the soft snake-like skin of his belly. Gradually the snake skin merges with the human skin of his chest and then remains human until it meets the rounds of his shoulders and neck, which are partially scaled again. At his cheekbones, jaw and ears he’s scaled more yet again, but these are smaller in size and more delicate than the ones on his sides and shoulders. The length of his tail is scattered with uniform but rounded patterns on its back, concentric variations of circles all the way down until Jack loses sight of the progress beneath the water. 

Jack glances up to his face again when the naga stirs, fixing him with those pale slitted eyes, now dilated so wide. He waits, and so does the naga, and they stay like that for a long few minutes before the naga finally croaks, “ _Why?_ ”

A shrug might be too cavalier for the seriousness of the situation but Jack is drained, dirty, and wet, so he just shrugs anyway and says, “Why would I kill you when I can save you?” 

“It’s the reverse logic for most everyone else,” he retorts harshly, his pupils narrowing again and his voice reedy from the stress of screaming in pain. He sits up slowly and withdraws his long tail from the water in its entirety. It’s close to twenty feet long in all, if not more. “Like the ones who did this.”

“They’ve been dealt with,” Jack tells him firmly, and slowly the gleam of his tattoos is dampening. “And it’ll be hell to pay if they don’t find something else to do besides outnumbering and picking on strangers.”

The naga nods and shuffles back slightly, further away, to put his back to the tree behind him. As he does though he blinks at Jack, seemingly confused. “You look… different,” he says, studying him intently.

“Oh,” Jack says with a small, breathless laugh. A quick thought and a hum later, his glamour is back in place. “Sorry. I know that’s a pretty daunting thing to look at in the dark.”

The naga doesn’t reply, only looks at him with big eyes and broad pupils, as if viewing some fascinating specimen. Jack takes a chance during the reprieve in conversation to shut his eyes and even out his ragged breathing but when he hears movement he’s snapping them open again. Across the mere feet between them the serpent is curling up, his tail coiling around his lower body and the tree trunk, rooting him to something solid and immovable. 

“I’m Jack,” he says, offering a small smile when the naga pauses stiffly. “Well, not really, but I’ve got a long and convoluted named that my parents gave me—fae, what can you do?—so Jack is close enough.”

“Mark,” the naga introduces after a pregnant moment of hesitation. In the moonlight his eyes glisten reflectively, making him appear predatory, but when they look at Jack all he feels from the serpent is curiosity, confusion, and gratitude. “I…” Mark sighs, running his hand over the top of his head and mussing his damp dark hair. “Thank you, Jack. For saving my life.”

“You’re welcome,” Jack says, and hums as he smiles. After a shaky moment of apparent uncertainty Mark smiles back. It’s weak and unsure, but it’s a smile. Mere seconds later Mark looks away, a rosy tint coming over his cheeks.

Jack hides his smile at that, instead sighing wearily and flopping back into the mud with a wet _splap_. “I’ve never rejected manticore venom before. I’ve seen and heard of it being done, but… whew, it’s a workout.”

“What… would’ve happened if it was too difficult?” Mark wonders haltingly into the quiet murk of the night. Around them the only sounds are that of owls and lapping water as a majority of the marsh lay sleeping. 

“I would’ve had to stop, or die trying,” Jack replies with a huffed sigh. “But I had faith I could do it, and I wasn’t close to death or anything. I’m just tired.” _Tired_ might be an understatement but he’s not about to elaborate.

“You cast that magic earlier, for the frogs and the water,” Mark murmurs, eyeing him. “To feed me when I couldn’t feed myself. And now this.” He lets out a slow breath and relaxes slightly against the tree, although his next words are tense. “I’m so indebted to you.”

Jack just laughs, though, resting his hand flat on his chest as he stares up at Gemini in the pitch sky. “Oh, god, no. We’re even, don’t worry about it. You’ve given me more excitement than I’ve had in decades. That’s reward enough.”

“It really isn’t,” Mark says somberly, and Jack looks over again to see a tiny frown on the naga’s face, slitted pupils wide. He watches as Mark smooths a hand over the side of his tail pensively, staring down at his patterned scales. “What’s that mortal saying? A life for a life?”

Jack’s face flushes with heat and he’s abruptly sitting up, hands already out to deflect the offer. “That’s—listen, that is really not necessary,” he says insistently, nervously as Mark looks at him with determination. “No, Mark, _really_ , it’s—”

“Is it alright if I stay here?” Mark asks, and the delivery is firm even if the words aren’t. “In the marsh. With you.”

Balking like a deer in headlights Jack searches for words, barely coming up with, “I—that’s—of course you… can stay, but—”

“Okay,” Mark says, and straightens. A genuine smile crosses over his lips. “Do you usually sleep in a tree?”

“I—Yes,” Jack replies, staring at him blankly and then out at the lake’s mirror surface, searching for some semblance of normal as disbelief overtakes him. A few bubbles come up to the surface nearby, there and gone again in an instant. “It varies, but I usually stick to near the lake or near my stash.”

“Yeah, I heard you talking to the lake,” Mark murmurs. He sounds surprised when he adds, “It helped me get to shore, earlier. I didn’t have the strength to swim, but… something pushed me along even though I couldn’t move anymore.”

Jack turns and gives Mark a sheepish smile. “I asked it to help you, to keep an eye on you, and it did. It was probably very flattered that you drank its water after I purified it, too. It’s an easy dude to please.”

With a nod Mark bends to peer into the water nearby. “Thank you,” he says politely, and Jack cracks a smile when the water nearest Mark bubbles voraciously. The naga laughs lightly, leaning back. “Now _I’m_ flattered.”

Jack gets to his feet with a precarious wobble but he stays upright. He grins at Mark to ease the guilt he sees in those pale, wide eyes. “C’mon. Felix will be dying to meet you.”

Obediently Mark follows him through the marsh, body slithering easily through the floodwater as Jack walks on top of it. Even being above the ground by a good ten inches, Jack still has to look up to meet Mark’s eyes. It’s no wonder people were afraid of him—he really is enormous, and they draw stares and spark whispers from each of the few beasts and demons they pass that are up at such a late hour. 

When Felix comes into view Jack lets out a low whistle and the tengu’s head snaps up, plumage lifted in curiosity. Abruptly Felix loses all his perkiness at the sight of Mark, though, and all his feathers flatten. 

“Oh, yes, he looks delighted to see me,” Mark muses, bending to murmur the words in Jack’s ear. 

“Hmm, he does look to be in a _fowl_ mood,” Jack says, gleeful to the tips of his ears. 

Mark laughs loudly, quickly slapping a hand over his mouth to stifle the sound in the relative quiet of the marsh. “That was terrible.”

“You still laughed,” Jack points out as they reach Felix, and smirks at Mark’s sad attempt to cover his smile.

“You just told a fucking bird joke, didn’t you,” Felix grumbles, eyeing Mark warily. The tengu doesn’t quite reach Mark’s towering height but he comes a little closer than Jack, even with Jack’s advantage of the water’s extra inches. 

“Would I scorn you so?” Jack says innocently. Felix glances at him with a scalding expression before turning neutral eyes back on Mark, clicking his beak in thought. “Hey, you overgrown parrot. Try and have manners, alright? He’s like, my indentured slave now or something. I don’t know. He follows me around.”

“I’m strictly here for decoration,” Mark tells Felix, almost straight-faced except when his lips twitch.

Felix looks between the two of them with dawning comprehension and skeptical judgment. “You’re the biggest goddamn decoration I’ve ever seen,” he tells Mark. He scores his eyes over the serpent briefly before fixating on Jack, piercingly intense. “Hero worship and servitude, I guess that’s not totally weird at all.”

Jack lifts his hands in pacification. “Hey, he volunteered. And didn’t listen to me saying no. For the sake of my sanity I’m preferring to think of it as a contracted friendship.”

“We signed in blood and everything,” Mark adds, grinning lopsidedly. 

“Oh my gods,” Felix sighs, clearly in pain from their senses of humour, and rubs his forehead with his knuckles. “Just… go to sleep, both of you.” 

“Going,” Jack sighs. “Off you go, as well, bird brain.” He waves the tengu away as if shooing an irritating house guest. 

Felix lets out a chuckle as his wings unfurl. “Oh, man, I can’t wait to see people’s faces tomorrow.” He waves and jumps into the air, ascending with strong buffeting downward strokes of his wings to roost high up in the limbs of a gargantuan weeping willow.

“Isn’t he just an angel?” Jack muses, and Mark doesn’t bother to hide his snort.

They bed down for the night in a smaller, chunky willow with a fairly uniform ring of thick branches. Mark stretches up and hoists himself onto one of the lowest branches, and Jack mutters a quick spell to bounce up into the boughs. To distribute his significant weight Mark loops his tail around the trunk in a loose circle, resting on every possible branch instead of just a few.

“I used to sleep in trees like this when I was young,” Mark murmurs into the silence after they get comfortable. Jack has his legs draped over one section of Mark’s tail, and his back resting against the trunk while Mark is on the branch to his left, head pillowed on his own tail. “Back then I only needed a few branches, not the whole damn tree.”

“I can see why you might not like sleeping in trees anymore,” Jack agrees, yawning and shifting slightly to look at Mark through the darkness. “Your size probably doesn’t make things easy.”

“Not even slightly,” the naga chuckles. “But so far I’ve yet to fall out of a tree. In adulthood, anyway.”

“I’m sorry,” Jack mumbles to break a brief pause, staring up at the sky. He makes himself look down at Mark’s face again and his eyes helplessly trace his torso, remembering the wounds that littered it. “About what happened to you. My instincts told me to intervene earlier than I did but I ignored it, and you got hurt.”

Mark’s bare shoulders shrug off the apology, accompanied by a lazy smile and Jack’s gaze wanders the naga’s broad chest for completely different reasons. “Considering you saved my life and all, I think you made up for it just fine.”

Chuckling softly Jack lets his eyes roam up to Mark’s and finds him looking right back. “Listen,” he murmurs, sobering. “About the “life for a life” thing.”

“Ah,” Mark sighs, but it’s not a weary, resigned or beleaguered sound. It’s almost _happy_. “Yeah. What about it?”

“I… don’t know how comfortable I am having a literal servant under my care,” Jack says at length, looking up to the stars again. 

“Like you said before to Felix,” Mark replies casually beside him, “just think of it as a unique friendship. If you don’t want me to do anything for you or be more than just a shadow at your side, then so be it. But I’m here to stay, no matter my role.”

Jack lets out a small huff of disbelief even as his mouth curves into a smile, moving his arms up to rest his hands behind his head. “I’ll be frank, Mark. You are completely out of my experience, and I’ve got quite a bit under my belt.”

Mark’s soft laugh reaches his ears right before the naga’s murmured, “I’m choosing to take that as a compliment.”

“You should,” Jack tells him, glancing over to meet his gaze. “Definitely, you should.” 

Mark smiles and doesn’t reply, and they fall asleep looking at the glistening stars through the foliage overhead.

*

He wakes up with the sun, his body warmed by its new morning light as it peeks up over the treetops. Stretching and yawning he sits up fully and looks over to where Mark lay sleeping still, half-propped up on his bulky tail, head resting on his bicep and snoring lightly. Jack smiles and carefully lifts his legs off of Mark’s body so as not to wake him.

In the vibrant sunlight Mark’s colours are much clearer. His underbelly is a pale yellow, and the majority of his serpentine back a sage green. The circles and ovals that pattern his scales are dark brown and black mostly, but some of them are tan or a deep shade of olive. For probably too long Jack sits there and admires his colouring, but with no one to catch him he doesn’t bother stopping until he has his fill.

A few hours’ of sleep after such heavy spellcasting isn’t exactly ideal, but Jack wasn’t the one that was lethally poisoned for over twenty-four hours so he’s not keen on comparing situations. Once he’s done ogling Mark he stretches, pulling his elbow behind his head and popping his shoulder with a contented groan. He leans against the trunk with his toes brushing up against Mark’s tail and watches the sun crawl its way up the sky. 

Mark stirs about an hour later while Jack is sunbathing like a spoiled house cat, lounging along the branch on his back with his eyes closed and his mind completely broadened to observe their surroundings with lazy, idle curiosity. He turns his head to look over and sees Mark reaching his hands up high, back cracking as he flexes his arms and bends backwards. 

“Good morning,” Mark mumbles sleepily once he straightens. 

“Morning,” Jack returns, sitting up and leaning into the side of Mark’s tail. “Slept alright?”

“Like the dead,” the serpent confirms with a bright, if tired, smile. “You?”

Jack shrugs. “Still a bit tired. A nap might be in my future this afternoon, or an early night.”

“I’m down,” Mark yawns, and Jack watches his long body start to slither from its multiple perches in the tree and onto the ground below, drooping in a long U shape as his tail succumbs to gravity. “Could we sleep on the ground, though? Assuming somewhere is dry.”

“Most of the high ground ought to have dried up by now,” Jack supposes pensively, then follows Mark down to terra firma, feet splashing and breaking the solemn hush of the early morning. The small amount of floodwater that was at the base of the tree is nearly all gone, just a shallow puddle’s worth of liquid left coating the ground.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m starved,” Mark says. The last of his tail drops from the tree behind him, creating a moderate splash before the water settles again. 

“We could likely find some tree geckos deeper into the marsh,” Jack suggests, debating for a moment before muttering a spell and stepping up onto the water. “And berries, maybe.”

“You had me at “gecko”,” Mark chuckles, then gestures for Jack to lead the way.

Jack fidgets his fingers as he walks and Mark slithers, finally breaking the easy silence after a few quiet minutes. “You seem so adjusted already,” he murmurs, and when Mark gives him a curious look he elaborates, “with me, I mean. You… just decided to follow me so quickly. So readily.”

Mark shrugs his broad shoulders, scratching idly at the scales on his chin with a claw. “Well, it’s not as if I wasn’t against you in the beginning. You forget that I watched you wait for me for a whole day. I knew you knew that I was hurt, recognized your voice from the night I was attacked. I still didn’t trust you to do more than end my suffering when I finally gave in to the venom.”

“Why, then?” Jack wants to know. “Why trust me at all, if you just expected the worst? Why drop your life so easily to be a footnote in mine?”

“When I was dying, I had nothing left to fight for,” Mark sighs, and finally meets Jack’s eyes. “I knew it was either suffer slowly to death by venom, or let someone finish me. I picked the lesser of two pains. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when you started to heal me, when I started to feel your magic. It made no sense for someone to undo something so close to completion. To me, anyway,” he adds, along with an aimless motion of his hand. “I didn’t think good creatures existed so closely to ones like the weasel yokai and his gang.

“As for following you…” The naga trails off, and the longer he goes without continuing Jack starts to think he’s lost in his train of thought. He opens his mouth to say something comforting, maybe something to dismiss his question altogether, but Mark lets out a small laugh and carries on, “As for following you, Jack, I’ve never met anyone who laid their life down with such casualness for a true stranger. At my arrival here I had no life left to speak of, situationally. I have life within me,” he says, brightening somewhat, “thanks to you, but before I let the monsoon sweep me away from my path I was no closer to any demon, beast or creature than when I arrived. Your trustful kindness was and still is outside the breadth of my understanding,” Mark muses, smiling. “And I suppose this is my attempt at repaying that trustful kindness with some of my own.”

Studying his face offers Jack no solution to the cataclysm of emotions inside him, but his senses are telling him that Mark is telling the truth, and then some. _His heart is so open to me_ , Jack observes with wonder. He can feel every single thing the naga is feeling, every last ounce of faith, dedication and, amazingly, adoration. 

“You’ve met fae before,” Jack says, because no one knows how to expose their soul like that simply by accident. 

Mark’s smile is wide and charming, only adding to Jack’s raucous emotions. “For a long time, yeah. She’s from Europe but lived in India, where I met her about forty or so years ago. She’s a sylph of wind, quite talented, and very kind. We parted ways amicably when she found her mate and they decided to travel together, but…” This time his shrug is morose, but his smile doesn’t lessen. “She and her mate were all I had, because others so rarely see past my size, my “true nature” as a serpent. It’s been months since she left for Japan, and I haven’t made a companion since.”

“You have now,” Jack says, swallowing past the small, tight clenching of his throat. _Such tribulations Mark went through just because of his parentage, of what he is and his physical superiority_ , Jack laments. He can’t help what he is anymore than Jack could stop being fae or wielding magic, and some creatures just have more negatives than positives on their personality charts, like the ones who attacked him—but others have more positives than negatives, others like Mark. As Jack looks up at him, takes in his carefree expression and casual posture, he feels proud to have already earned the friendship of such a courageous, loving soul. Mark looks down at him and he slows to a stop, the massive naga pausing close to his side. “As long as you choose to stay, I’ll have you with me.”

When the smile spreads over Mark’s mouth, reaching his eyes and lighting up his face like the most vibrant will-o-the-wisp, Jack’s lungs seize and it’s a brief moment before he can draw in air again. Like a breeze Mark’s emotions wash over him, and foremost is giddy and uncontained happiness, and an undeniably strong attraction. Jack feels his face heat but he can’t tear his gaze away from those widely dilated, honest eyes. 

Wordlessly Mark lifts his hand and places it gingerly on Jack’s shoulder, setting the skin there into a helpless scattering of sensation. Hope fills the naga’s eyes as he bends several feet to reach Jack’s face where he presses a slow, tender kiss to the middle of his forehead. When he pulls back Jack is breathless, staring into pale yellow eyes almost completely consumed by their dark pupils. 

Mark’s hand slides up his neck to rest at his jaw and Jack feels small, so very small compared to the naga but he knows he’s nowhere near any kind of danger. The fae turns his face into the touch and puts both of his hands on his wrist, slender fingers wrapping around Mark’s skin, prolonging the contact.

Letting out a soft noise Mark moves closer and bends down again, this time to put a gentle kiss on Jack’s cheek. His free hand snakes around Jack’s waist slowly, easy to shake off if he doesn’t want it but Jack does nothing of the sort, instead leaning forward and tipping his face up to Mark’s in askance. Mark makes another sound, a little rougher, and Jack watches his pupils fluctuate into slits and then back to ovals before Mark dips his head and kisses him. 

A fuse ignites in Jack at the brush of his lips, a steady burn that travels through him and leaves him wanting. Almost immediately he’s lifting up onto his tiptoes, deepening the modest, simple kiss. Mark’s broad hand on his back eases him just a little closer and he goes willingly, so willingly, a small noise escaping him as Mark’s tongue peeks from his mouth and licks at him.

Jack draws back minutely, just enough to look into Mark’s eyes and murmur, “Your, uh, your…”

“If your question is, “Is your tongue bifurcated?” then my answer is yes,” Mark replies, his eyes twinkling with amusement as he opens his mouth slightly to show a relatively normal-shaped human tongue—except for the fact that it appears longer, and of course the first inch of it is split in half, not unlike a snake’s. “Nature’s doing, not mine.”

“That’s—that’s fine,” Jack mumbles, flushing, and lets his hands delve into Mark’s dark hair to pull his mouth back down. He feels Mark’s smile against his own and then the naga licks along his lips again, seeking entrance. Jack opens his mouth at once, the naga’s oddly-shaped tongue coaxing him and burning him up in equal parts, and Mark’s hands tighten on his body before he hoists Jack up off the ground and crushes the fae to his chest, muscled arms around his back. His gasp ends in more of a moan as Mark’s broad hands hold him surely, and in turn Jack holds onto the ebony strands in his fists while Mark explores his mouth.

Mark pulls back incrementally, as if the thought of stopping kissing to speak is torture. “You taste like magic,” he murmurs, smiling. “You feel like how it felt when you healed me.”

“I am my magic,” Jack mumbles back, petting his fingers through Mark’s hair. He offers a small, coy smile when Mark hums in pleasure, closing his eyes. “And my magic is me.”

“Heather used to say that,” the naga says softly. “My sylph friend. More than a few times she healed me, too, when I got into trouble because of other people’s opinions of me. Not as bad as what you had to do, but sometimes… bad enough. When I was younger I courted danger like a mistress,” Mark explains wryly, mouth quirking even as his eyes remain closed. “And she would end my scrapping every time, like a worried and stern mother.”

“I doubt you ever got into as much trouble as you have recently,” Jack chuckles. Gently he brushes the pad of his thumb along Mark’s brow, smiling in soft delight when Mark visibly melts under his hands. “Though, I also doubt that even in your wild days you antagonized a whole group of beasts.”

“You’d be wrong on both accounts,” Mark replies with a small huff of amusement. “A younger me was only kept on the straight and narrow because of Heather. Otherwise I may have been just as aggressive as the next creature.”

“No, I think not,” the fae murmurs. Mark opens his eyes, slit pupils adjusting to the change in light like a camera lens auto-focusing. “And I’m sure Heather told you the same.” He leans back and Mark obligingly loosens his arms around Jack’s torso, putting some space between their chests. From his hair and down the sides of his neck Jack slides his hands to rest over where Mark’s heart lay beating in his chest. “This heart is made out of pure, untarnished gold.”

“Let’s not get ridiculous,” Mark muses, and Jack feels the idle brushing of his fingertips on his waist. “Maybe silver is more accurate.”

“If you insist,” Jack concedes with a chuckle. He traces a lopsided heart on Mark’s pectoral with a finger, biting his bottom lip. “We should get breakfast. Are you still hungry?”

“Now for something else entirely, yes,” Mark tells him, leaning in and kissing below Jack’s left ear. He nips there delicately—Jack feels the gentle poke of his fangs against his skin like the most stimulating of needle pricks—then recedes again and smiles at Jack’s heavy blush. “But I suppose those geckos have waited long enough.”

Mark sets him on his feet again and Jack’s knees are significantly weaker than when he stood last. As Mark lets him go he holds in a sigh, those hands leaving his skin cool and yearning, but as Jack turns to walk once more Mark stops him by taking Jack’s hand in his much larger one. He bends and brushes his lips over Jack’s knuckles then lets his hand drop again, and Jack feels his blush returning for the millionth time of the hour. 

“You’re the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Mark says softly, hands cupping Jack’s face tenderly, eyes searching his. “You were like a mirage in the desert last night, too spectacular to be real. The glow of all your markings, the shade of your skin, those little horns… Beautiful.”

Self-consciously Jack lifts a hand to rub at one of his short, curved horns but Mark beats him to it, and Jack lets out the most embarrassing noise possible when Mark’s thumb teases around the base of it. “You’re going to unravel me completely at this rate,” Jack mutters weakly, hands clamping around Mark’s wrists. 

“Something tells me no one’s been around to flatter you properly,” Mark surmises, smiling as Jack shivers at his unrelenting touch. “And if there has, it wasn’t nearly well enough, I’d say.”

“Maybe you’re just too much,” Jack suggests wryly, humming low when Mark cradles his head in his hands and kisses him briefly.

“Am I?” Mark queries, smirking when he pulls back.

Jack gets lost looking at Mark’s eyes, and it takes him a long moment to reorganize his mind enough to mutter a half-hearted, “Y… yes.”

“Liar,” Mark replies easily, and steals another kiss before letting him go and straightening to his full height. “Don’t fae find it incredibly rude to lie?”

“Hypocritically, we have less of an issue with it when it suits us not to be truthful,” Jack snorts. Mark’s booming laugh warms his body and he catches himself smiling before he can stop it as they start walking again. “It’s a bit funny, though. A fae and a naga. The ones who despise deceit, and the supposedly deceitful ones.”

“A match made by the gods, no question,” Mark chuckles. His expression sobers a little when he adds, “This is okay, right? This… what I’m doing, what I’m starting, it’s okay?”

“Mark, if I didn’t want you to touch me, you wouldn’t,” Jack says plainly, matter-of-fact. “Because you wouldn’t do it if you knew I wasn’t consenting, first of all, and because I have more than enough power to contain you if I wanted to.” He glances up and over, nudging Mark’s arm with his elbow. “It’s fast, for sure. But it’s okay.”

With a sigh of pleased disbelief and a nod Mark goes silent, and Jack is content to lead him without any conversation. A few minutes of walking later and they come upon a more secluded area of the marsh, where the trees grow closer together and the air hangs lethargically off their shoulders. The transition is gradual enough but Jack still feels the magic of the area as notably as if he’d walked through a wall of water.

Beside him Mark shivers, eyeing their surroundings. “The air is so close in here,” he notes, moving his splayed hand slowly through the air. “Much more potent than the lake’s power.”

“The lake spirit has a… mate, of sorts,” Jack explains, pointing deeper into the thickening grove of trees. “When it was young the lake spirit was lonely, mournfully so. It lamented its solitude until the goddess Persephone graced it with this marsh, to draw in creatures to keep it company. One such creature, a dryad named Simeus, was drawn here and stayed. He visited the lake daily, sometimes more than once.”

“What happened?” Mark asks when Jack pauses.

Jack smiles. “On one spring night Simeus told the lake, his closest friend, that he wished never to leave its shores ever again, that he was happiest when basking in the sun’s rays with the lake’s water surrounding him. The lake, too, felt such a deep connection to the dryad, and the two decided to bond themselves together permanently. Being a spirit without a corporeal form, the lake could hardly be given a ring or take vows, so Simeus instead decided to go into a deep, everlasting state of spirituality that would match the lake’s spiritual presence. As a dryad he would become a tree in this state, and the lake wouldn’t let him grow so close to his shores that there might be a chance for the lake’s magic to somehow overcome him, or vice versa. So Simeus started at the lake’s shore and took a thousand paces south and then became a strong, tall tree and rooted himself soundly into the soil. At that distance he could still feel his mate clearly, and the lake could feel him, so there he has stayed since at the centre of this grove. Around you are Simeus’ and the lake’s children, all raised from the lake’s water and Simeus’ roots and seeds.”

“That’s beautiful,” Mark murmurs. When Jack glances up at him he’s smiling. “What a wonderful tale. Thank you for telling me.”

“The lake would want you to know,” Jack says, smiling too. “It’s very proud of Simeus. It loves to brag about him to whoever will listen.”

“I’m curious,” the naga says after a short moment of silence, “why the lake bears no name? Surely it had one at one point.”

Jack shrugs. “It’s an old spirit, older than anyone or anything else in the marsh. When it came here and melded itself with the lake, things were… lost, in the process. The lake forgot its name, forgot whatever humanity it may have had before the merging, but it remained the same person as it always was. It’s why the loneliness was so much to bear, being on its own after losing so much of itself already. Persephone pitied it, empathized with it, and granted it the solace of company with others again, in turn giving it much to live for in the future.”

“I’ve never put much stock in the gods before,” Mark says conversationally. “But Persephone… For being wife of the god of the underworld, her heart seems soft. Softer than I’d have guessed, even for the goddess of spring. In my experience, and from what I hear, the gods are not defined as merciful in any stretch.”

“She is merciful, at times,” Jack allows, smiling. “Her presence here is concentrated since it’s her land, and discourse within this place… Well, it reflects poorly on her, I suppose. But she is kind, for a god.”

“How old are you?” Mark asks curiously. “You’re awfully well-versed in this area, in the gods. I wager you’ve got several lifetimes behind you already.”

“Isn’t it rude to ask someone’s age?” Jack muses, his nerves igniting in a fiery static when Mark grins broadly.

“Maybe, yeah. I’m eighty-four, if you were wondering,” Mark chuckles. He bumps his knuckles into Jack’s shoulder lightly. “C’mon, spill. I won’t make too many old man jokes, promise.”

Jack laughs lightly, even though his stomach twists with anxiety. “I’m… a little older than eighty-four,” he says at length.

When that appears to be the only answer, Mark groans. “Oh, even I could have guessed that, Jack. Give me a number at least. Two hundred? More? Five hundred? How many eons we talking here?”

“A bit more than that,” Jack mumbles. At Mark’s speaking look and his finger prodding into Jack’s ribs, the fae adds in a sigh, “One thousand, three hundred and twenty-six.”

Mark whistles. “Wow. Over a millennium. I know fae are basically immortal and all, but still. That’s neat.”

“Neat,” Jack parrots incredulously, laughing despite the nervous clench in his gut. 

“Yeah,” Mark says with a grin. “Never met anyone that old, and the older souls are usually much more crotchety than you.”

“For good reason, too,” Jack muses. “We live through a lot in this world, and the longer it goes on the harder it seems to get.”

“Still,” Mark says, shrugging easily, as though merely talking about the weather. “A millennium is a long while to cultivate magic for a fae. No wonder you purged manticore poison so easily. I bet you’ve got power coming out your ears by now.”

“Not quite,” Jack chuckles. He side-eyes Mark, but the naga is looking around them at the trees and listening to the wildlife, moving along placidly. “So… it—it doesn’t bother you? How old I am?”

“Does it bother you how young I am?” Mark counters, glancing over at him with a cheeky smile. “Do you feel like you’re cradle-robbing?”

Jack barks with sudden laughter, smothering the sound with his palm as he says mirthfully, “No, I don’t think you could be mistaken as a youth, never mind an infant.” His eyes roam Mark’s body appreciatively as he adds, “Your physicality prevents such notions.”

“Oh, does it?” Mark wonders. Jack flits his gaze upward and meets his probing, heated stare. “What other things does my physicality tell you?”

“It also tells me you’re probably a fantastic gecko snatcher,” Jack says, biting his lip to hold back a smile.

Mark doesn’t bother with such things, though, and smiles wide. “You’d be right.” He looks around as they come to a slow stop. The trees here are taller than others in the marsh, some with trunks several feet across and all with an air of magic to them that alludes to a deep connection with their sources of power. The boughs of the trees, broad as they are, cover most of the morning sunlight from direct view, leaving the marsh with an eerie, cool vibrance as the light casts through their leaves.

“We’re close to Simeus,” Jack murmurs redundantly, because just to their left is the biggest tree of all. It has the widest trunk, the farthest and highest-reaching branches, and it emits such a sense of intelligence and life that its presence as a spirit is undeniable. He points and Mark turns to look, letting out a soft breath of awe as he no doubt feels the tree’s magic. 

From across the expanse between them, Jack feels a sort of nudging against his mind and his magic from the old dryad, and he turns to Mark. “Simeus wants to meet you,” he says, smiling at Mark’s surprised look. “What, you didn’t think the lake liked you by some fluke?” At Mark’s shrug Jack’s smile curves into a smirk. “Face it, Mark. You’re spirit nip.”

The naga laughs at that, following Jack as he walks to the tree. “I admit, I’m unused to being so popular. But I think that goes without saying.”

Jack smiles at him as they reach the tree, and he steps forward until he can press his forehead to the trunk, palms flat on the knobbly wood. “Hello, _cara_ ,” he murmurs, and feels Simeus’ responding wave of nostalgic sentiment. “I missed you, too. It’s been too long since we’ve spoken.” Jack laughs a little as he murmurs, “I brought a friend with me, and you’ll be pleased to know I’ve finally found someone who likes hunting geckos.”

“Hunting anything worth eating, really,” Mark interjects. At Jack’s come here gesture he approaches the tree, putting his hand flat on the trunk as well. “Great to meet you, Simeus. I’m Mark.”

Above them the boughs of Simeus’ upper branches groan in a nonexistent wind, leaves rustling and performing a hushed harmony of whispers. “He likes you,” Jack says, grinning, “and he says your soul is the kindest he’s seen in a long time.” When the leaves overhead rustle furiously, Jack adds reluctantly, “Aside from mine. Which, just so you know, Sim, as a comparison hardly counts. I’ve been in this marsh for over two centuries, and Mark barely a few days. You know me very well and him barely at all.”

“It makes you no less kind,” Mark points out, and grins when Jack faux-scowls at him. “In fact, it makes his point more poignant. That many years, he’d know when another soul as kind as you is present.” Jack’s scowl deepens, and Mark’s grin broadens. “Hey, I’m just agreeing with Simeus.”

A shower of foliage falls over Mark’s head from some low-hanging branches, and Jack doesn’t bother to hide his laugh as Mark is shortly covered in leaves. “Now he _really_ likes you,” Jack giggles, his heart seizing when Mark grins at him through the arboreal debris. 

“I guess I am spirit nip,” the naga laughs, shaking the leaves free. He puts his palm against Simeus’ trunk again, smiling helplessly and murmuring, “I never knew how flattering it would be to be liked by an ancient tree.”

“Wait until you meet Persephone,” Jack muses, and Mark’s eyes flash with fear. “I’m kidding!”

“You better be,” Mark grumbles, pressing a hand to his heart. “I swear I almost had a stroke just then.”

“Well, she only comes around every century or so,” the fae tells him, his smile mischievous. “She’s overdue for a visit, and she’ll want to meet you, I think.”

Mark’s face pales. “Please, please be joking,” he begs in a whisper.

“I’m only half joking,” Jack says. Mark doesn’t look relieved in the slightest, but he doesn’t look more frightened either. “She is overdue for a visit, but she doesn’t typically come by just for fun. She, um, usually waits until something exciting is happening.”

“What about her restrictions?” Mark asks, swallowing. “Like, the whole thing with her being torn between Hades in winter and her mother Demeter from spring to autumn?”

“She works around it,” Jack shrugs. “Unless it’s pressing, we won’t see her at winter. The rest of the year she’s usually busy anyway, so she’s scarce. Like I said, every century or so. Relax,” Jack says, fighting a smile. “She won’t be here.”

Mark squints suspiciously at him, his eyes slitting to narrow slivers, but after a moment he starts to relax. “If you’re sure,” he hedges.

“I’m sure,” Jack says, putting a comforting hand at Mark’s elbow to ease him away from the tree. “Come on, Simeus is bored by our flirting. Let’s go hunt some geckos.”

They silently wander through Simeus’ grove, eyes peeled for the critters in question, and before long Mark points out a colourful splash of patterned skin against a tree trunk some twenty yards away. This far away, little else can be seen of the gecko except its striped and spotted orange and yellow hide. 

Jack gestures for Mark to proceed and Mark bends, smiling, and pecks a quick kiss onto his cheek before advancing stealthily towards the gecko, his body low to the ground. Jack waits as Mark stalks his way closer, and finally, without a single sound, Mark pounces the last stretch between himself and the tree, a twenty-foot gap. His long body arches through the air and expert claws swipe the gecko surely from its spot of bark, and Mark turns around and brandishes the tiny reptile to Jack. 

He walks his way to Mark, saying cheerfully as he gets near, “Good catch. He didn’t see it coming.”

“Serpents are known for their speed,” Mark reminds him, eyeing the gecko in his hand. “Pretty bright colours on these guys for a marsh species.”

“They’re enchanted by Simeus and the lake’s combined magics,” Jack explains. “They drink the water, they live in the trees. The species is actually unique to the marsh, completely new these past fifty years or so. Simeus said he’s always striving for new things for the lake and himself. The past millennium or so they’ve been focused on keeping the marsh healthy, but since I got here the nature magic’s been much stronger, and they’ve been able to look into other hobbies.”

“And you said you weren’t powerful,” Mark chuckles, handing the gecko over when Jack makes a grabbing motion for it. 

“I may have been a little dishonest,” Jack says evasively, holding the gecko in both hands. He sings a short lullaby of fire and roasts the gecko between his palms, then gives it back to Mark, much crispier than before. 

The naga beams at him. “Nice! No need for a campfire when I’ve got a fae on my side,” he says happily, then eats the gecko in a single, huge bite.

They hunt geckos and pick berries until they’re both satisfyingly full and, after saying goodbye to Simeus, they make their way back to the lakeside section of the marsh. Once they reach the inner borders Jack heads directly for Felix, sensing him amongst the many creatures now awake and alert in the marsh, Mark at his side. 

“If I was a nervous sort of person, I would be very nervous right now,” Mark murmurs to him as they pass the weasel yokai and his accomplices, save for the manticore Jiwu. All of the beasts and demons present, every last one that’s been within sight, have watched the pair of them like hawks the entire way through the marsh. 

“You’re doing great,” Jack replies softly, and puts his hand in Mark’s. Contentment radiates from Mark in waves and his hand clenches around Jack’s tightly. 

“Well, don’t you two look positively cozy,” Felix says when they find him. The tengu looks unsurprised by their closeness, and even less so for the horrified, aghast responses from the marsh’s other inhabitants.

“We had a gecko hunting date,” Jack says, and he couldn’t help his small, pleased smile even if he tried. “And we spoke to Simeus a little.”

Felix smiles, too, at the mention of the dryad. “Good. I bet the old twig gets a little bored of nothing but bugs, birds and lizards.” He eyes Mark. “By the look of things, I suppose he just adored Mark.”

“He’s probably Simeus’ favourite now,” Jack confirms, laughing. His shoulders crawl with unease as his laughter tapers off and he turns to look over his shoulder. Across the small glade they’re in he can see the weasel yokai and his friends all staring at himself and Mark, talking in hushed whispers. While he cant hear them, their very aura screams of scheming and Jack feels his magic responding in kind, flaring up at the perceived, obvious danger.

“I don’t trust those fiends,” Felix says, and when Jack turns back Mark and Felix are both following his gaze towards the yokai. Without looking away Felix continues, “I found out that he and his bunch are new, supposedly just passing through, but they should’ve left days ago. His name is Ghenem, and everyone I spoke to so far can’t say much about him except that those who’ve interacted with him don’t want to again. He’s supposedly rude, and crass, and a variation of other pleasant qualities.”

Jack narrows his eyes, frowning. “He’s looking to cause more trouble. I know it.”

“He’s been asking around,” Felix sighs, and Jack turns back to him at the beleaguered tone of voice. “About you, Jack.” The fae’s eyebrows spike towards his hairline and Felix continues with a nod, “No one’s told him anything, of course, beyond what’s blatant. The whole marsh knows what you’re capable of now, bringing someone back from the brink of death without even getting yourself in worse shape in the process. The lot of them are flabbergasted.”

“They can stay that way,” Jack mutters, his mind racing as it searches for diplomatic solutions to his growing problem. “What purpose does Ghenem and his group have against me? I only undid their ridiculousness.”

“It was your threat,” Felix sighs again. “They’re bristling at the idea, apparently, that a fae could dare to raise a hand against them, such powerful beasts as they are. Supposedly.”

Mark puts a hand on Jack’s shoulder and the fae turns to him. His face is clouded by temper. “Why did you threaten them?” he demands. “Your safety is more important than making sure they don’t cause trouble.”

“This marsh is under the protection of a goddess,” Jack retorts. “The second something moderately out of place starts happening her disciples will show up in numbers, if not Persephone herself, and then there will be no more chances for diplomacy.”

“And what’s the alternative, getting yourself in harm’s way so that Persephone can have a holiday from maintaining her own land?” Mark rebukes hotly. “How did you come to be where you are in life and have no self-preservation?”

“I’ve been asking him that for years,” Felix interjects drolly. He lifts a hand, talons splayed, when Jack’s face riles into a feisty scowl. “Stop fighting. We three are on one side, and I’d prefer not to separate you two if it can be helped.”

Jack takes a deep breath and tamps his temper down, ignoring the clench of Mark’s fingers on his shoulder and looking away towards Ghenem again. He sighs laboriously, debating how much he should tell and how much he should withhold before he opts out of adding more dishonesty to the air. “I protect this marsh,” he says stonily, studying the yokai. “Under the will of Persephone I’m its primary protector, its main force of authority aside from her. Simeus and the lake aid me where they can, but for the majority it’s my responsibility.”

“Wait a minute,” Felix says incredulously as Mark opens his mouth, no doubt to say something similar. His large hand falls slackly from Jack’s shoulder. “What the hell do you mean, it’s your responsibility? The _whole_ marsh? The whole marsh is yours, from the goddess Persephone?”

“She would argue semantics, but, yes, I suppose for all intents and purposes it’s mine,” Jack sighs, staring down at the damp soil underfoot. 

“So, what, you were part of her disciples?” Mark wonders weakly. 

“In… a sense,” Jack hedges, and he rubs a weary hand at the back of his neck. “She… I suppose I was a confidant, an advisor of sorts? She’s a friend,” he says helplessly, searching for the right words as he looks between Mark and Felix’s gobsmacked faces. “I’ve known her a long time, and her husband Hades. But, shortly before I was given the marsh Hades’ attention towards me gained some new… feelings. Something new was in his eyes when he looked at me, and Seph and I both knew what was going through his head. She didn’t resent me for it but both of us were realistic—he could very well have tricked me into a similar trap that he’d snagged her under, all those eons ago. So she offered to have me care for and keep this land, to hold me close at hand but out of Hades’ reach.”

With a disbelieving huff Mark looks down at him, smiling crookedly. “If I’m spirit nip, you’ve got to be god nip,” he muses. Although his face looks a little white around the edges the naga doesn’t seem too badly shocked by the news, and Jack’s relief must show because Mark’s smile curls up at the corners, his eyes softening and his expression sweetening. “I suppose the allure of a centuries-old fae is too much to resist, even for gods.”

“You’re not wrong,” Jack mutters, but he smiles when Mark slides a soothing hand across the back of his neck again, squeezing lightly. “As a gesture of companionship Persephone introduced me to the gods, all of them, on Olympus. The deity equivalent of bringing a friend over, I suppose.” He sighs. “The level of interest in the place was… stifling, let’s say. I don’t know what it is about gods and fae, but god nip isn’t far off. Add into that my age and power… I was propositioned by Aphrodite probably four times, and Hephaestus was within earshot. But the way he looked at me… Well, it hardly discouraged his wife’s behaviour. More like seconded her notions.”

Mark puts a hand over his mouth, eyebrows high and apparently content to be silent as he absorbs. Felix glances at him before saying to Jack, “So, let me get this right. You’ve been BFFs with Persephone for a good chunk of the past half millennium, she gave you a magical marsh to watch over because her husband started to want you to himself, and when she introduced you to the entirety of her godly family, the lot of them also want a piece of that.”

Jack massages a temple with his forefinger, a headache threatening. “Yeah, I guess.”

“So, you’re on speaking terms with gods,” Mark says, probably aiming for casual but it mostly comes across as strained.

Jack shrugs again, careful not to dislodge the comforting hand at his nape. “She’s proud of me, as a friend. She wanted me to know her family, and I got along with Hades before he changed. Seph noticed before I did, what mindset he was creeping into.” Jack feels his expression fall slightly. “I knew she was jealous of his interest in me, but she never said anything, and I couldn’t bring myself to either. I was too ashamed.”

“I very much doubt you enticed him on purpose,” Felix argues at once, beak clicking in irritation as he stares his best friend down. “Why feel shame over something you can’t control?”

“Of course I didn’t entice him, or any of them,” Jack snorts, “but that doesn’t mean my lack of give-a-fuck stopped them any. They’re gods. They’ll do whatever they please.”

“Typically, yes, they tend to,” Felix agrees bitterly. “But at least Persephone is on your side.”

The fae allows himself one more sigh before shrugging off his bad mood like a cloak. “Back to the matter at hand,” he says, looking briefly at Ghenem and his gang. 

“What are we going to do about those fellows?” Mark asks. On his neck Mark’s hand is warm, and the naga is emitting a constant supply of happiness. It seeps into Jack and perks him even as avid worry, both over the gods and his brand new yokai fustration, tries to overtake his mind. He reaches up and puts his hand over Mark’s, and the naga’s emotions spike before settling again. 

“We wait,” Jack murmurs, and the three of the watch as Ghenem and his friends slowly slink away, casting glances back towards the trio several times. “We watch, and we wait.”

*

After that first night Felix starts to roost with them to sleep—mostly for safety, since none of them want to be separated in case Ghenem gets bravely aggressive—and while Jack is happy for the additional company, as well as spending most of the day with Felix it depletes his alone time with Mark into almost nothing. 

It’s been three days since he saved Mark, four since Ghenem attacked him, and the weasel yokai has done nothing to raise suspicion except for persistent staring from himself and his troop. It’s confusing, to say the least, especially since the yokai is neither leaving the marsh nor acting maliciously towards him, the two things he suspected of the demon. A third option lay open before him now, mental warfare of a kind. Ghenem will wait, and wait and wait, until Jack, Felix and Mark drop their guards, and then he’ll strike.

Felix sits above him in the boughs of a tree, his clawed feet gripped tight to the branch as he squats and grooms his feathers. Beside him Mark is coiled into a sloppy pile in the grass, lazily draped over a section of his tail and half-buried beneath another section of it. Jack looks up to the sky, darkening into dusk and beginning to allow the emergence of the stars, and shifts his weight as he leans back against the tree’s trunk. He hums a lullaby to himself to keep the negativity from swarming him like locusts, but still he’s plagued by his own mind.

Now that the thought is in his mind that the gods aren’t finished with him, it’s hard to shake. Hades is easy enough to figure out since Jack knows him quite well, but the rest of the pantheon has him sweating. Zeus’ remark the last and only time they met—“Until we meet again, Jack.”—has him rethinking his security. Persephone couldn’t stop her father anymore than Jack could, if the god-king decided to take whatever it is he wants, never mind the rest of them. Persephone might be able to deter her sisters, brothers and cousins, but the primary god figures like Apollo would be a challenge to dispute, if not an outright loss. And the strongest ones like Zeus and his brothers Poseidon and Hades? There would no chance of winning against them at all.

“Such heavy thoughts, for so beautiful an evening,” comes Mark’s quiet voice from the creeping gloom. Jack glances over at him, forcing a small smile and forming an excuse on his tongue, but Mark is already shaking his head. “Don’t bother lying to me. I can practically smell it on you.”

Jack’s smile becomes genuine as he chuckles softly. “Who’s the empath here, you or me?”

“There’s being an empath, and there’s lying to prevent concern from others,” Mark replies, his tone gentle. “Come on. Let’s hear it.”

“It’s… Look, it’s really nothing,” Jack tries, and then he sighs when Mark only quirks an eyebrow expectantly. “The gods. I’m worried about the gods, and how my previously-thought security here may not be so secure.”

“They wouldn’t risk upsetting Persephone by taking or combatting you, though, would they?” Mark asks.

“If they want me enough, they absolutely will,” Jack replies wearily. “Deities are… flawed, some more than others. Just like the rest of us.” When Mark offers a hand Jack takes it, and the naga pulls him up to be resettled inside the small crater of his coiled body, Jack’s back reclined against his scaled side. Mark is over him in an instant, snuggling up over his right side and putting his face at Jack’s neck, and he lets out a blissful little noise when Mark presses idle kisses there. “Some gods can be as petulant and greedy as a child in a sandbox, and they usually want all the toys.”

“But it’s been more than two centuries since you came here,” Mark recalls. He pulls back to look Jack in the eye. “Would they leave you alone for centuries just to make you drop your guard? Do they have that kind of patience?”

“My being immortal makes this just as pleasant for them as their own unerring longevity.” Jack stares into Mark’s slitted, pale eyes, and of their own volition his hands come up to bury in Mark’s off-black hair. The naga hums pleasantly, leaning into his hands, and Jack smiles as he scratches his scalp. “They know I’m as capable of waiting as they are. I imagine the longer period of build up is quite enjoyable to them.”

Felix drops from his roost with a whoosh and a rustling of feathers as his wings fold up. “And those gods are welcome to come and claim you. I’ll peck their bloody eyes out.”

Jack snorts, letting Mark take his hands and hold them. “I appreciate that, Felix. Still, along with Ghenem, this… this proves to be a problem.”

“They’re afraid of you,” Mark murmurs, “and probably me as well, now that I’ve survived. Don’t you think we’re justified in purging them from the marsh by force? It’s not like we don’t have the power.”

“I want to avoid that, if I can,” Jack sighs. 

“Jack, I think it’s time you were realistic about this demon,” Felix grumbles. Jack turns to look at him as he walks around Mark and into view; Felix’s face is troubled. “We either wait until he makes a move, and an aggressive one at that, or he gets his ass kicked out by us before anything bad can happen. He’s not giving us any other options here, and him waiting only makes us more tense and unable to keep our guards up. For the safety of us, of everyone here, and for the sake of not attracting any unnecessary godly attention, we have to finish this before it can start.”

“Felix is right,” Mark murmurs, and the fae scowls. “I know you don’t want discourse, or bloodshed, but this needs finishing.” He rubs a hand down Jack’s spine, thumb brushing at the small of his back and slipping just under his shirt hem, and Jack slowly unwinds at the touch. “And if you’re worried about Hades or any other gods wanting to intervene at the commotion, then we can’t risk this getting big enough to distract Persephone, or else she’ll come and they’ll follow.”

“Alright,” Jack concedes. “I admit that one will undoubtedly aggravate the other, if left unchecked. And Ghenem has caused enough trouble to warrant being removed from the marsh.” He chews his lip and adds reluctantly, “I just don’t like being the one to… finalize something like this. I don’t like being the hammer of justice.”

“Persephone wouldn’t have put you in charge if she didn’t think you capable and willing to do what’s necessary to preserve this place,” Felix tells him seriously. “You said you’re friends, that she trusts your judgment. Then trust your own judgment as she does, as we do.”

Jack looks over the curve of Mark’s body to the interior of the marsh, where he can just barely sense the yokai responsible for the naga’s almost-demise. Left alone, the demon and his allies are a threat to Jack and Mark, and now Felix by association, and anyone else in the marsh who might stand in their way. If they cause enough trouble to draw Persephone’s eye, the entirety of the Greek pantheon may look down on the marsh in curiosity, and then there’ll be something to really worry about.

“Okay,” Jack affirms, and as he says the words he feels his will tempering and hardening as his decision is made. “Tomorrow we confront them.”

*

It doesn’t take until tomorrow. Mostly because as the three lay sleeping that night, Jack’s senses snap him awake at once when someone approaches their tree. The quiet, whispering brush of grass blades over feet, the shift of soil under the soles of feet and pads of toes, the hushed gusts of breath from their stealthy assailants. 

He lays still, listening hard as the footfalls come closer. He’s thoroughly wound up with Mark inside a bed of the naga’s tail, and he presses his palm flat to Mark’s chest to wake him gently. The naga stirs and Jack instantly puts a finger to his lips, moving slowly and minutely in the dark. Mark’s eyes slit into narrow spikes in the dark, and his head nods, a minuscule motion. 

By their auras Jack knows he’s dealing with Ghenem and his friends, and Ghenem himself comes right for Jack where he lay in Mark’s coils. A paw moves out of view and then there’s the song of metal hissing as it slides from its sheath. Jack only has time to tap his fingers quickly four times against Mark’s neck before he drops his glamour and casts a blinding white light outward in all directions, a heavenly glare from his exposed magical rune tattoos.

Ghenem and his four companions all cry out in pain at the sudden brightness, and it’s more than enough time for Jack to squirm free of Mark as the naga hastily untangles himself. In the resulting chaos Jack manages to locate Ghenem. The yokai has a hand over his eyes, stumbling around and yelling angrily, and his four companions are equally dazed and confused. Jack dims his runes again until they only shine with a mild glow and there’s a loud thump followed by several grunts, and he feels three beasts go down at once behind him. By now Felix is awake, too, with his talons firmly around the neck of the fourth and final assailant, what looks like a juvenile cat yokai, probably the one that tried to attack him. 

“Odd, for you to be the one catching her, and not the reverse,” Jack can’t help but interject, grinning broadly. He turns and throws out a hand when Ghenem tries to stumble blindly away and the yokai is cast to the dirt, where the roots of the nearest tree loop from beneath the earth and twine around his limbs. " _Plucky_ , even."

“For the love of Zeus,” Felix mutters, feathers bristled with indignation, and mildly shakes the cat in his grip when she hisses at him. “Enough, you. Don’t make me put this situation to good use.”

Jack turns to look behind him again. The remaining three beasts, a satyr, a raccoon yokai and a toad yokai are beneath the hefty girth of Mark’s tail, smushed into the ground with all of his considerable weight on them. 

Mark looks up and grins at him, his pupils back to normal as wide, dark ovals. “What?” he laughs, shrugging. “They were running.”

The fae cracks a smile. They get the five of them together, bound tightly in a loop of Mark’s tail and doubly bound by Jack’s magic, and Jack lights a small blue-flamed fire to see a little more of their surroundings. 

Ghenem glares at him as he crouches before the weasel, expression hard. “Ghenem. I’m sorry to see us meeting again under violent circumstances.”

“I’m not,” Ghenem snaps, lips curling up over his maw to bare white fangs. 

“Well, to each their own,” Jack says easily, unsmiling. “This, fortunately for everyone else, counts as qualification for your official ejection from this place. I’m going to put you all under a spell, and when it wears off you will have no memory of this place, or anyone in it, or what transpired here. You will forever have a hex on your souls that prevents you from returning to this marsh, and the spell will leave behind a trace of magic that will show every deity, demigod and immortal that you are worth no help or aid.”

“I was born under the sign of Ares,” Ghenem snarls. “You can’t just take my godsign away from me.”

Jack stands, brows lifting. “What do you know about what I can and can’t do?” He smirks meanly, then casts the short spell to ward them from godly aid. “Well, you’re clearly in distress. Go ahead, pray to Ares. See for yourself.”

Ghenem sneers at him but does as suggested and mutters a short prayer of assistance to his patron god. Jack watches the realization come over his face when there’s no responsive sensation, confirmation that his prayer was heard by Ares. Beady black eyes narrow in hostility on Jack’s face. “What have you done?!” he roars. 

“I told you,” Jack says simply. He tunes out the weasel’s raging and motions for Mark to move away. His tail slithers away from the beasts, well out of the way along with Felix, and Jack sings the long, detailed spell necessary for banishment. 

He feels the magic drain out of him in droves—banishing five souls at once is no easy task, and the strain makes his knees wobble as he casts the final part of the spell. Mark catches him when his knees completely buckle, and they watch as the five beasts stand in unison with blank expressions and turn to leave without a single word of parting. Their figures disappear into the darkness of the marsh, and Jack lets Mark lower him to the ground to sit and rest.

“You doing alright?” Felix asks him, and snuffs the flame with a gusty swipe of his wing. The marsh returns to its nightly glory and somehow, the feeling of being safe is compounded as he sits beside Mark and Felix in the pitch dark. 

Jack gives a tired smile but nods, knowing they can both see him anyway, and sets his glamour back in place to cover his rune tattoos. “Yeah. Just a little worn out. I’ll be right as rain in no ti—”

He’s cut off by a burst of red and orange light off deeper into the marsh, followed immediately by a calamitous, booming explosion and a fire ball that billows up into the sky over the trees. Screams ring out, and the three of them jump at the sound, eyes wide as the redness of the fire brightens the marsh into a sinister relief of destructive colour. 

Without a word Jack is on his feet and sprinting hard through the trees, the sounds of Mark’s body on the ground and Felix’s wings flapping following him closely as well as their exclaimed, confused questions, and in minutes they come upon the scene. A section of the inner marsh has been blown apart by the explosion, the nearest trees shattered and scorched into bits and the ones beyond lessening gradually in damage. Some are singed, but most are still ablaze.

Jack comes up to the nearest creature, a water nymph cradling a trembling cluster of squeaking, terrified bats to her chest as she watches the blaze in horror. “What happened? Is anyone hurt?” he demands.

“I—no, no, everyone was sleeping over in the other side of the glade,” she says pathetically, and she’s obviously close to tears. “That weasel and his friends bunked on this side of the glade, so we all steered clear.”

“No one was close by?” Mark clarifies, a comforting hand resting on Jack’s shoulder. “You all just saw it?”

“No,” she says in a whimper, and now tears roll down her cheeks while she eyes the burning trees. “Oh, Jack, help them. Can’t you feel their pain?”

He can, like brands on his nerve endings he feels the trees’ pain, and already he’s bending to place his palms on the ground when Felix and Mark simultaneously stop him. “No more spellcasting today,” Felix says, voice hard.

“They need my help,” Jack says brusquely. “I’m not letting the marsh burn down just because I’m tired.” He shrugs off their hands and kneels in the dirt, palms pushing down into the earth as he starts to sing. He feels Mark and Felix’s irritation at his stubbornness clashing with his own at their mothering, their interfering after telling him to do what’s best for the marsh. He sings the spell until all the fires have been drained, all trees healed of what they could be healed, and whatever couldn’t be saved was sealed against further damage. 

As soon as he lets the spell go he knows they were right, and Mark barely catches him this time when he abruptly lists to the side and falls over. Mark picks him up wordlessly, but even as exhausted as he is Jack still feels his irritation, his worry and his anger like a beacon though the fog of his mind. 

“‘M’sorry,” Jack mumbles, eyelids heavy as he looks up at Mark.

Felix is raging beside Mark about Jack being too generous for his own good, and doesn’t he know any better than to overdo his magic by now? But Jack just hears Mark’s quiet, terse, “It’s fine,” and he knows that he’s messed up.

“Where are we going?” he asks, but this time Mark doesn’t answer. The naga slides along for a while, Felix ranting as they go, and only when Jack is resting upon the ground with water lapping at his legs does he realize where he is.

“Hello again,” Mark says to the lake as he holds Jack up with an arm around his shoulders. He puts his hand in the water and wiggling his fingers in greeting to the spirit. “Jack needs your help. He used too much magic, and he’s nearly incoherent from fatigue.”

At once water is rushing up over him, but before it can do anything it’s rushing back down again. Jack lifts his head to question the odd action when, suddenly, a star of a presence is incredibly nearby. Mark’s arm is stiff around him and Felix has gone curiously quiet, and even the marsh itself hangs in silence. It’s familiar, that soul, as familiar to him as the lake and Simeus, but he still lifts his leaden head to verify the identity of the person approaching.

Persephone walks down to the lake shore, materializing smoothly from nothing but air into a solid being. The goddess isn’t tall and slender like a model, nor ethereally beautiful. She’s plainly pretty and blonde, almost white-blonde, with her hair done up in a lazy ponytail. Her skin is a smooth, creamy peach and her eyes are huge, doe-like and deeply brown. Her features are rounded, her body curved, and she wears a simple but flattering white, floor length toga. Just having her near Jack feels his power returning and he sits up on his own, Mark’s shaking hand on his back.

“Seph,” Jack croaks, but she kneels by his side and tuts at him until he quiets. Her dainty hand lay upon his where it rests in his lap and a cascade of power washes into him, coaxing his soul back into livelihood like a blooming flower. 

She pulls her hand away after a few seconds and instead puts her forehead to his, smiling ruefully. “Seajaccos,” she chides him, and Jack flushes at his full name. “I leave you alone for a century and look what happens. Five banishments and the quelling of a small forest fire in one night. Do you think you’re capable of miracles, little one?”

“I got it done, didn’t I?” Jack retorts, and grins when she scowls at him. 

Persephone gets to her feet and Jack follows suit. Behind him Mark lurks, evidently nervous, and Jack turns to him, extending a hand. Mark takes it in his at once, and Jack rubs his thumb over Mark’s much larger one. “Seph, this is someone I’d like you to meet. Mark, meet Persephone. Seph, Mark. And,” he adds with amusement, “behind you hiding in the tree is Felix, my good friend.”

“I know of Felix from many years ago,” the goddess says amiably, turning her eyes to the trembling tree in question with a pleasant wave. Then her gaze lands on Mark, and her smile becomes soft and loving. “Mark, too. I know what Jack did for you and what you’ve given to him in return, and what you have endured to come to be here. You have done so well with what you have been given in life.” 

“Ah, uh, thank you,” Mark stumbles, dipping his head, looking suddenly awkward with his body as he fidgets. “It’s… an extreme honour to meet you.”

“Oh, he’s so polite, Jack,” Persephone coos, beaming. “I like him, let’s keep him.” Her bright expression gains some mischief at Mark’s strangled noise and Jack’s hushed laughter. “Now, do tell me what’s been going on. By the look of things you had some genuine trouble on your hands.”

“The yokai Ghenem and four others were… unhappy, when Mark arrived with the last flood,” Jack explains, his tepid rage at the incident warming slightly. “They provoked him and when he wouldn’t be provoked, they attacked him. It involved those five and one other, Jiwu, who bit Mark and envenomed him. I caught them right at the end of the fight and warned them what those kinds of actions would get them, and the next day Mark let me heal him of his wounds and he decided to stay. It was quiet for days, and then the yokai tried to attack the three of us in our sleep tonight and set off some kind of explosion deeper in the marsh.” Jack takes a deep breath and blows it out again. “That covers it, I think.”

Persephone’s pale eyebrows arch expansively. “Well. That sounds like quite the week, but you’ve done a fine job keeping this place safe, _mo cara_.” Her hand brushes the hair from Jack’s forehead, trailing a finger along the pointed curve of his ear. “I do apologize, also,” she adds pensively, smiling, “for my archaic attire. Togas are somewhat of a vintage fashion trend at the moment for the pantheon. Athena wove some for everybody, even. It’s delightful, I admit, but I find it’s much too flashy for everyday wear.”

“At least you’re wearing clothes,” Jack says loudly, with pointed looks at Mark and where he knows Felix is hiding.

“And cover this body?” Mark demands, affronted as he gestures to himself. His facade breaks, though, and he laughs at Felix’s indignant squawking from within the tree. He looks equal parts shocked and pleased when Persephone laughs, too, loud and bright. 

Her laughter cuts off abruptly, though, and then her gaze goes from the sky to Jack’s face in a heartbeat. “Oh, dear, I’ve—Curses, I’ve attracted attention down here, and they’re already suspecting that my whereabouts have to do with you. I’ve got to—”

“Puppet, where _have_ you gone?” comes a new male voice from within the dark, and as if from shadow itself the figure of a man materializes, tall and imposing. The man is brown-skinned and blue-eyed, and his face is unassumingly normal. A pair of simple square glasses sit on his nose under a tidy but long mop of dark hair, and he’s wearing a knee-length black toga and sandals. 

The man’s eyes ignite as they see Jack standing beside Persephone, and Jack's blood chills. “Now this is a surprise,” he says pleasantly. “Jack. I daresay it’s been a while.”

“It has, Lord Hades,” Jack replies evenly, and he feels Mark’s hand twitch anxiously in his. He squeezes back and hopes that it’s somehow comforting in the presence of the gods of the Underworld. “You look well.” 

Persephone drifts to Hades’ side and pecks his cheek with a kiss. “Darling, let’s hasten back to the pantheon. I’m sure Zeus is missing us.”

“In a moment, pet,” Hades muses, stroking a hand down her arm before walking smoothly to Jack. His face displays his pleasure plainly and a calm and composed but grand sense of possessiveness wafts over Jack in waves. The fae does his utmost to prevent the fear from showing in his own face as the god continues warmly, “Seajaccos. How I have missed you.” His smile quickly falls, though, as he studies Jack more closely. “You have dulled yourself since last I saw you.”

“Only a glamour, Your Grace,” Jack replies. Hades’ expression is expectant and despite Mark’s grip firm on his hand he can’t shake the sick feeling in his gut as he dissolves his glamour, his tattoos reforming on his skin and his aura thickening into a subtle glow, and Hades’ eyes light up with lust.

“Beautiful,” Hades praises, gaze roaming him freely. “You know," he adds conversationally, "it’s been an age since you were last at Olympus, and I’m sure the others would be most welcome to the idea of seeing you again.”

Jack can’t help the way his face loses all colour, or the sudden tremble in his hands. Mark’s fingers squeeze his in a death grip as if terrified of letting him go for any reason. “I’m afraid I’m quite worn out from the night’s events, my lord,” he declines gently, “and I fear I would be poor company.” He swallows when Hades’ brow lowers steeply and Persephone walks quickly to her husband’s side. “I beg your pardon.”

“Hmm.” Hades eyes him much less kindly than before, apparently choosing to ignore the words his wife whispers placatingly into his ear. “What have I done to deserve such reticence from you?”

“Nothing, my lord,” Jack says quickly, and behind him he feels Mark move closer.

Hades looks past Jack to Mark, and when he sees their joined hands his face twitches with fury for the briefest of moments before he’s composed again. “I can see your loyalties have since changed.”

“Two centuries is a long time to create new bonds,” Persephone cuts in, her eyes no longer placating as she stares her husband down with underlying frustration in her features. “And I tire of your flattery by the second, love. So we _will_ being going now.”

The two gods have a staring match, each one equally put out, and then Hades sighs and mutters something too quiet to hear. “I’ll be seeing you soon,” Hades says louder, right to Jack, with eyes like burning blue embers. It’s not just a parting sentence, but a promise. 

Jack swallows again as Persephone gives him an apologetic look and Hades gives him an irritated, amorous one, and then both gods dissipate into mist. He exhales hard and doesn’t protest at all when Mark instantly pulls him close, sweeping him into his arms in a nearly-bruising hug. 

“Gods above,” Mark whispers, hands shaking where they smooth over Jack’s back. His emotions are haywire, worry and fear the most prominent, but beneath it all is a deeply flattering sense of love and care for his wellbeing. “Those were... _Jack_.” His head ducks to press his face in Jack’s neck, and he presses constant kisses wherever his mouth rests. 

Felix flutters down from the tree in a single leap, landing a few feet away. He lays a hand on Jack’s shoulder for a long moment of comfort before taking it off and giving them both a worried look. “Well. Hades knows where you are, and no doubt the rest of the gods by the time their socializing is done. ”

“Persephone can’t hold them all back from me,” Jack says regretfully, cold acceptance already finding its way into his heart, icy fingers clogging his veins. “I’m one of the oldest fae alive. The allure to a god to have an immortal pet is paramount, and one already so old that it’s well beyond adolescence, beyond its most aggravating years? Half the pantheon, Zeus included, will call for me within the hour and I cannot refuse them. I should not have even refused Hades.”

“Out of the frying pan, and into the fire,” Mark mutters, lifting his head to look Jack in the face. He’s terrified, but his expression is one of determination. “What can we do?”

Slowly Jack cups Mark’s face with his hands, thumbs brushing his cheeks. “Nothing,” he replies mournfully. “We are at the whims of gods now.”

“No!” Mark insists. He grabs Jack’s wrists and shakes him. “No, we can—there’s some way we can fight this, right? Felix?” He turns to the tengu, but Felix offers only a weary, depleted shrug in response, his face sombre. Mark looks back at Jack and his pupils are thin lines slashing vertically across pale yellow orbs, crazed with desperation. “I’m not going to give you up, to—to Hades, or Zeus, or anybody. Not when you don’t even want to go.”

Jack puts a hand at Mark’s cheek and smiles sadly. “You’re right. I don’t want to leave this place, or you. But when the alternative is both of us perishing for defying a god?” He shakes his head, even as Mark does the same. The naga grabs his hand and holds it to his face, puts kisses on his palm, but Jack gently pulls away. “I would rather you live without me than not at all.”

“Please, we have to try,” Mark begs, grabbing for his shoulders. “Please, Jack. _Try_. Try with me.”

“There is no winning for our side in this fight,” Jack tells him. Silence stretches between them, and amidst it Jack hears Felix’s retreating steps, feels his soul gaining distance from them, probably giving them some privacy. They stare at each other, emotions flitting like birds, and he lets Mark kiss him when he bends but he resists the urge to reciprocate—he could be the soil beneath them for all the reaction he gives—and eventually Mark pulls away. His expression is destroyed by emotion, his brow knotted by woe and his mouth moued. “There is no winning for us now, Mark.”

“So you’re just giving up,” Mark says dully, his voice lacking even the slightest hint of hope. “We’re just done, then, and you go to the highest-bidding god.” Jack feels his heart shatter in his chest at the deadness in those beautiful serpentine eyes, but he makes himself nod. “I don’t suppose anything I could say would convince you otherwise, either.” He doesn’t pose it as a question and Jack doesn’t respond to it, and after a long moment Mark lets him go and moves back. “Okay,” he gets out, and he won’t even look Jack in the eye. 

Jack reaches out for him helplessly but his fingers only meet air. “Mark, I’m sor—”

“Don’t you dare apologize to me,” Mark snaps at him, eyes to the trees. It’s a real shard of anger, not the first he’s seen in the naga, but Jack can say with fervour that it’s never something that he wanted to see in Mark’s face, ever, and it’s certainly never something he wanted to cause. “Don’t… don’t apologize for being a realist, I guess. What good is fighting when the odds are so slim? What…” Mark exhales a slow breath and turns his gaze to the stars. “What good is fighting to keep a handful of scales?”

“Mark,” Jack whimpers. He rushes forward until his palms are flat on Mark’s chest but the naga doesn’t respond. He digs his fingers into the skin, his eyes begging for Mark to look at him. “This isn’t… This isn’t about…”

“If I was enough,” Mark croaks out, “you wouldn’t want to give in so readily. You would want to fight.” His hands rub at Jack’s shoulders. “You were right. There probably is no winning for us.” 

“I’ve been wrong before,” Jack whispers, and presses his forehead to Mark’s chest. He’s so short compared to the naga that his brow only reaches Mark’s biceps, and he feels every inch of the difference when Mark sighs and brings him close. “It’s not that you’re not enough. You are. And it’s not that I don’t want to fight for my freedom. I do.” He looks up at Mark and his chest sparks with nervous fire when Mark finally looks back. “But I know that a loss is not just a loss, it’s death. If you’re what’s keeping me on Earth, if you’re the obstacle that prevents me from ascending to Olympus, then you’ll be removed. Simple as that. And I can’t live with myself if I’m the reason for your death.”

“But you fail to see something crucial,” Mark sighs. He smiles softly and bends down to kiss Jack’s mouth, murmuring against his lips, “I would die without you.”

“Don’t—be so—dramatic,” Jack chuckles as Mark pecks his mouth with hard kisses, his smiling lips leaving imprints against Jack’s soul. When Mark pauses he says seriously, “I mean it. Don’t… don’t think that I’m it for you. You’ve got lots of life left in front of you. I’ve had a good enough run that I can… I can forfeit the rest.”

“Now who’s being dramatic?” the naga asks him, and he smiles at Jack’s short, soft laugh. He kisses Jack again, and again, and finally when their kissing doesn’t seem to stop he simply scoops Jack up and holds him to his chest.

“Goodness,” comes a delighted female voice, and Jack’s senses burst as Persephone’s presence alights in the marsh again. They part and Persephone stands before them, this time dressed in simple jeans and a v-neck t-shirt, her hands clasped at her waist. “Something seems to have happened in my absence.”

Before Jack can speak Persephone is talking again with a nonchalant wave of her hand. “No matter, anyway. I come with a solution to your war of godly affection, in two parts.”

“You do?” Mark exclaims, letting Jack down to his feet again. “What are they?”

“Well,” she says cheerfully, “you’ll have to undergo a fae rite of matrimony.”

“I know of those,” Mark says, perking somewhat. “Heather and her mate underwent one, before they left. It seals their souls together, does it not?”

Jack frowns. “But what good will that do? Gods have no care for the bonds of fae.”

“But they do if the fae or their partner is also an immortal,” Persephone replies brightly. “Specifically a demigod.”

“Neither of us are a demigod,” Jack says, confused, and now he shares an equally confused glance with Mark. “I’m not even a technical immortal.”

“Oddly enough, you happen to know someone who can help you with that,” Persephone muses, placing a hand on her hip and brushing nonexistent dirt off her shoulder. She gives them both a pointed look and smiles to herself, evidently very pleased, and the blocks fall into place.

“You can’t—you can’t just _make us demigods_ ,” Jack says hoarsely, his voice cracking as he stares at her incredulously.

“Certainly I can,” she says primly, and then grins. “Watch.” With that Persephone advances on both of them, lifting a hand first to press her fingertips to Jack’s chest, and then Mark’s. At once Jack is frozen, immobilized by infinite energy coursing through him, and by the rigidity of the naga beside him he knows Mark is similarly indisposed. Slowly Persephone spreads her fingers and flattens her hands until the heels of her hands rest against their chests, and then without warning she shoves them both hard in the sternum, but neither of them move an inch. From her touch funnels a sluggish, viscous energy, a sensation of cold, heat, electricity and wind all mashed into one single thing that pushes its way through every last cell of Jack’s body.

When he’s consumed by fiery, electric cold her hand pulls away, and Jack gasps in a huge breath once the paralysis is gone. His hands are instantly coming up to his head, his chest and stomach, his arms, checking them for similarities and differences. Everything is the same, but now he feels… _power_ within him. A cataclysmic amount of power, even compared to the significant amount he had before.

“Is—What—” Mark stutters, studying his perfectly normal hands and glancing between Persephone and Jack. “What on Earth—?”

“Welcome to the world of godhood,” Persephone says, smiling. 

“The… the what now?” Mark says weakly, his large body visibly stiffening, tense with confusion and mild horror. He radiates constant emotion like a TV switching channels, but all of it is just static to Jack when he tries to sort out the individual senses.

“Seph, by the heavens, you can’t…” But Jack trails off, because by Persephone’s eager smile, she definitely can and she definitely has. He stares up at the goddess, shock overtaking him. “Seph, you… Why?”

Her bright expression softens into something deeper, more loving as she beholds Jack with a tender smile. “I see the fear in you. I see that terror of my family, of what serving one of them will mean, compared to me. Even having you serve me these past centuries, little one, I would not have you reside at the pantheon, knowing how you detest it so. This is the only way I can fathom that you will never have to bend to a god’s will—within reason, anyway. Zeus always tries to have the last word, but even he can’t undo this.”

“So… so what does this mean?” Jack wonders, pressing a palm to his brow in disbelief. “We’re… we’re demigods, or immortals, or what?”

“Demigods,” Persephone replies, smiling wider at their shellshocked expressions. “Immortality would be enough, I suppose, but with this you carry my power and my name, and now it will be… interesting, to say the least, if another god tries to claim you.”

“But, I don’t need to be immortal, or a demigod,” Mark says trepidatiously. He’s quick to add, “Not that I don’t appreciate your generosity, my lady! But… isn’t this all a little extravagant?”

Persephone winks at him. “Consider it a gift, Mark. I would no sooner have Jack live out his days mourning the loss of you than I would sever my own marriage. This way, you avoid the pantheon in its entirety, and you will remain together infinitely.”

Mark looks down at Jack with bold, unending affection all over his face. The shock is still there but it's easier to comprehend as Jack looks up at him, and he knows Mark feels the same. He lifts a hand to smooth it over Jack’s cheek and smiles. “I think… Yeah, I think I can live with that.”

“Oh, you think so?” Jack muses, and smiles when Mark stoops down to kiss him. “So we’re demigods, then.”

“We’re demigods,” Mark affirms, and then both start laughing in complete disbelief even as Mark bends to kiss him again.

“And lastly,” Persephone says when they separate, taking a hand each and bringing Mark’s hand to clasp around Jack’s, “we solidify a bond.” She pauses, eyeing both of them, and her expression softens. “Would you both still like to continue?”

Mark looks from Persephone to Jack, and while his eyes hold worry in spades, there is no fear, no hesitation or holding back. “I’m ready,” Mark says, almost immediately. 

Jack looks to Persephone with a smile, clenching Mark’s hand in his and feeling the responsive, perfect grip that he gets back. “We’re ready.”

Persephone performs the spell, a long and convoluted string of words that she sings beautifully with both her small hands overlapping their joined ones. Mark’s face is radiant in the moonlight as he looks down at Jack, pupils blown so wide that it’s hard to see the yellow past them, and Jack knows he must look similarly elated. He feels… unstoppable, uncontained and bright and so free, more free than he’s ever felt in his life, and it takes a lot of willpower not to interrupt Persephone by kissing Mark blind. 

Her voice tapers off on a final word, a final note, and like a subtle trickle of water down his spine Jack feels the magic taking hold. “You may seal your bond with a kiss,” Persephone allows once she’s finished the spell, grinning at the pair as they stare avidly at each other. “Goodness, you’re both just to die for.”

“I’ll second that,” Mark says, and then bends and crushes his mouth to Jack’s. Sensation fizzles its way down Jack’s body and back up again, and he throws his arms around Mark’s neck to prolong the utter perfection of the moment.

A bolt of lightning crashes to the ground along with a rolling boom of thunder, and Jack and Mark hardly separate before a broad, fair-skinned man with long golden blond hair tied up in a bun and a bushy blond beard stands before them. He’s wearing a white toga, his strong brow arched low over his piercing gold eyes, and he looks furious.

“Do explain what it is I’m looking at, Persephone,” Zeus says harshly with an inarticulate wave of his hand towards Jack and Mark.

Persephone shrugs, unperturbed. “Just what it appears, Father. I have bonded these two demigods under a fae rite.”

Zeus’ eyes blaze with temper. “I sent you down here to fetch the fae, not _bond_ him to another. And do you presume to tell me that you’ve bestowed these two with godhood?”

“I presume nothing, for it is now fact,” she replies evenly. “He was mine first and for centuries he has stayed that way, despite your thoughts otherwise. I would not give him to anyone, Father. Not even you.”

“And now you’ve deprived even yourself of him, you fool,” Zeus spits. “Demigods don’t serve gods.”

“But friends serve friends, my lord Zeus,” Jack inputs. When the god turns furious eyes on him he persists, “I would not have wished to dupe you, or your family. You… you can see the unique position we were placed in, I’m sure. I respect you greatly, my lord, but… it is not my lot to serve you.”

Zeus lifts his chin as he regards them, a stony silence stretching for a long moment before the god lets out a harsh breath through his nose. “So be it,” he snarls. He waves a hand at Mark, who still has his arms around Jack soundly. “Cavort with this… snake, if you wish. Know that I will not offer you a place at my side a second time.”

“I thank you greatly for the opportunity, Lord Zeus,” Jack says politely, and leaves it at that.

The King of Gods says nothing, and regards his daughter with a cold eye before giving Jack something close to a longing glance. Then with a broad sweep of his arm a lightning bolt forks through the clouds and strikes him, ascending him back up to the stars.

“Do all gods like flashy entrances and departures?” Mark whispers to Jack in the following quiet, smirking, and Jack covers his giggle.

“You, my newest demigod, will soon find that flashy entrances and departures are half the fun of being a deity,” Persephone informs him with a beaming smile. Mark chuckles, and Persephone’s smile widens as she comes forward and embraces them both in a tight hug. “Oh, how I cannot wait to see your destinies unfold. The Fates have given you each tribulations aplenty, but now…” Her smile becomes a beaming grin as she backs away from them. “Now I think the fun begins.” She plants a kiss on each of their cheeks, and with a dainty wave she dissipates into a delicate rain of flower petals.

“Flashy exit,” Mark muses, and Jack’s still laughing when Mark lifts him up and kisses him.

*

“Seajaccos,” Jack says, enunciating clearly even as he smiles.

“Shajakos,” Mark says, and immediately frowns. “That wasn’t right.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Jack laughs. He shifts himself on the piled coils of Mark’s body, getting as comfortable as possible when half-pinned by an enormously heavy naga. “The, ah, the J is softer, and the “sh” at the beginning is more… more like “shya”. Shya-jahk-ohs.”

“Shya-jak-oss,” Mark mutters, frowning harder. He kneads his knuckles idly into Jack’s stomach, making his skin sing with feeling. “Shya… Shya-jahk-oss? Shya-jahk-os?”

“Very close,” Jack tells him, smiling. “The “os” is longer, like “oh” with an S on the end.”

Mark sighs, resting his forehead on Jack’s shoulder. “These fae names are worse than anything else on the planet, I swear.”

“You’re not wrong,” Jack chuckles. “Why d’you think I go by Jack?”

“Because you’re smart,” Mark mumbles, and kisses his shoulder before straightening again, a concentrated scowl on his face. “Shya… Seajaccos.”

Jack beams at him, his stomach fluttering oddly at his name on his mate’s lips. “That’s it, just like that!” He rushes up to kiss Mark’s mouth, clinging onto his neck. “Say it again.”

“S-Seajaccos,” Mark stumbles, grinning when Jack kisses him again, harder. “Seajaccos,” he muffles into Jack’s mouth, then laughs at Jack’s excited wiggle before bringing the fae close and deepening the kiss.

“I could listen to you say my name all day,” he murmurs, sighing happily as Mark kisses a gentle path down his neck. Over the treetops he can see the sun just barely peeking through, the lightening sky and the pinks of the clouds preceding its warm arrival.

“How about for the rest of eternity?” Mark wonders, smiling as he lifts his head to look down at him. “I’ve got about thirteen hundred years of absence to make up for on my part, Seajaccos.”

“Sounds good to me.” Jack smiles back and opens his mouth when Mark bends to kiss him, fingers tangling in dark brown hair as the sun undoubtedly rises.


End file.
